As we know incandescent bulb has been around for more than a century lighting homes around the world. Many people know the name Thomas Alva Edison, the man who invented the light bulb. Some among us might not know or remember this. The year that saw first Light Bulb incandescent electrical light bulb as we know it today being born was 1879. Before this many attempts were made to convert electrical power to produce light most notable one being electric arc lamp. It produced light but also produced a huge amount of heat making it unsuitable for wide spread use. Apart from excessive heat it was huge in size and didn’t have standardized form unlike incandescent bulbs.
Change and improvement never stops and this applies to everything in life. Invention of light bulb was not immune to this phenomenon. Soon Fluorescent light bulb (fluorescent tube) was invented at the turn of the century. This invention proved to be far more efficient in converting electrical energy into light energy. However this type of light source required some additional gears called choke and starter to produce light. Incandescent bulb produced light through heating metal coil to a very high temperature which produced light. Unlike incandescent bulb fluorescent tube produced light through electrical discharge inside a tube. It has minute amount of mercury which once heated produce ions resulting in creating a conducting path making discharge possible. Since light produced inside the tube is not visible, it is coated with a special coating which converts this invisible to visible light.
One of the problems with this type of light was that it created radio interference which was much undesired aspect of it. This light also had downside of giving light in certain light spectrum which distorted how colours looked compared to its actual look in sun light. These aspects apart from tubular shape restricted its applications. To overcome limitations imposed due to tubular shape it was produced different lengths such as 2.4m, 1.5m, 1.2m, 0.9m, 0.6m
Smaller length tubes solved some of the issues related to its tubular form. Apart from smaller size various types of light fittings were invented to direct light in such a way that it was possible to obtain directed and to some extent focused light from tubular shape.
Vapour Lamp are next generation of light source that revolutionized lighting. They are two types Mercury Vapour Sodium Vapour type. Sodium vapour lamps are two type Low pressure and high pressure. Both of these produce light by discharge through tube filled with Sodium metal. Low pressure lamp produce light which produce colour distortion but they are energy efficient on the other hand high pressure lamps produce better colour rendition whereas they suffer from energy efficiency.
These bulbs produced light through high voltage discharge one of the highest amounts of luminous flux per watt of electrical power consumed. This made it light source of choice for lighting up large areas such as sports fields, large factories, street and large warehouses. These light bulbs produced very high luminous flux and hence could be used where focused very high intensity light source was required. It still suffered from very high amount of heat generated which limited its application in small restricted spaces.
Compact Fluorescent Lamp also known locally as Energy saver bulb came out in late 1980 even though it was invented in early 70’s. This truly revolutionized lighting scene that lasted unchallenged for 3 decades until LED technology became commercially viable to produce electric lamps. These light bulbs are small in size and produce much less heat compared to HID lamps. This opened up space for them to be used in decorative lighting application where small focused light source was needed. A 15W energy saver could replace 60W incandescent bulb
Now LED light stands as one of the most efficient sources of light. In last 10 years it has become so widely used that it’s almost impossible to find a home or a commercial establishment that does not have them.
To put things in perspective a 100W incandescent bulb produces about 1500 Lumens while a CFL or Energy saving globe uses 25W to produce the same amount of light. When it comes to LED it only takes about 16W to produce the same amount of light while lasting 10 longer than an ordinary bulb.
During the recent times we had seen such a rapid decline in price of LED bulbs that they tend to be much cheaper than any other type of bulbs in during initial purchase. If one really try and look at cost benefits over the entire life cycle then it makes such a compelling argument to buy LED light bulbs
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