Is Agapito Flores the real inventor of the Fluorescent Lamp?

Many Filipinos claim that Agapito Flores is the inventor of the Fluorescent lamp, which is one of the most widely used source of lighting in the world today. The fluorescent lamp reportedly got its name from Flores. But who is Agapito Flores?

Agapito Flores was born in Guiguinto, Bulacan Philippines on September 28, 1897. He worked in a machine shop and later moved to Tondo, Manila where he trained at a vocational school to become an electrician.

According to Dr. Benito Vergara of the Philippine Science Heritage Center, “As far as I could learn, a certain Flores presented the idea of fluorescent light to Manuel Quezon when he became president. At that time, General Electric Co. had already presented the fluorescent light to the public.”

Fluorescent light is a product of 79 years of the development of the lighting method that began with the invention of the electric light bulb by Thomas Edison. Among other inventors that claimed credit for developing fluorescent lamp were French physicist A.E. Becquerel (1867), Nikola Tesla, Albert Hall, Mark Winsor and Edmund Germer. Fluorescent tubular lighting systems were first made by Andre Claude, inventor of the neon sign, in France in 1932. Under the Mazda lamp agreement, Westinghouse and General Electric obtained Mr. Claude’s patent rights and developed the fluorescent lamp we know today.

Fluorescent lamps were introduced at the 1939 World’s Fairs in both New York and San Francisco. The introduction heralded a new light source of high efficiency, low brightness, long life and a new physical dimension.

Fluorescent lamp was not named after Flores. The term fluorescent first cropped up as early as 1852 when English mathematician-physicist George Gabriel Stokes discovered a luminous material called “fluorspar”, which he coined with “escence”. The National Academy of Science and Technology also dismissed Flores being the inventor of the Fluorescent lamp as a myth. “No scientific report, no valid statement, no rigorous documents can be used to credit Flores for the discovery of the fluorescent lamp. We have tried to correct the misconception, but the media (for one) and our textbooks (for another) keep using the Flores example,” a Filipino scientist wrote in her column at the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

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