Savoy Theatre, London, 1881. View of the interior of the Savoy Theatre with the house (not the stage) lit by Swan incandescent lamps. Joseph Wilson Swan invented an incandescent electric lamp in Britain in the late 1870s, about the same time as Thomas Edison was patenting the invention in the USA. Built by Richard D'Oyly Carte in 1881, the Savoy Theatre was the home of the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas.