Joseph Swan was born into a well-to-do family in Pallion, a centre of Sunderland’s shipbuilding industry. At 14 he was apprenticed to a pharmacist but then became a partner in Mawson’s, his brother-in-law’s manufacturing chemist’s business on Mosley Street. Subsequently the company became Mawson, Swan and Morgan. Swan’s most famous invention is the electric light bulb. He experimented for nearly 30 years before being ready to give a successful public demonstration of his incandescent carbon lamp in the lecture theatre of this building. His Low Fell home was the first private building in the world to be lit by electricity, and The Literary & Philosophical Society then became the first public building, when in 1880 Swan lit the entire lecture room with his light bulbs.