Same here! Well, in the '80s. Something I thought was pretty cool: I'd hold one end to something medal like a door knob, the other end with my hand, then rub my feet on the carpet to generate static electricity. This made the tube light up just a little bit for a fraction of a second!
You're in good company! 😉 flourecent and mercury street lights were my fav. Always wanted a merc street light, but a flourecent was the next best thing. My parents never understood my fascination with these lights.
I couldn't agree with you more. Fluorescent lamps have a long history, dating back even to Nikola Tesla. His many experiments with high voltage and high frequency lighting were the predecessor of the modern fluorescent lsmp. Today, we have LEDs, but even they cannot light up a poster like a true fluorescent black light can.
@@bob4analog They replaced the bluish mercury vapor lamps in Chicago with orange-ish sodium vapor lamps. Now, the street lights in Chicago are LEDs. Yuck! They are ugly but they work. I miss the old days with neon signs and fluorescent tubes.
I felt the same way as a child in the '80s. Of course, I encountered fluorescent lamps in many places, including stores, my school, and the kitchen at home-but there seemed to be a clear division between where incandescents were used and where fluorescents were used, so that, without thinking, I associated the quality of light with the place that it was in. Then came two shocking changes. One was around late 1988, when I got a new desk in my bedroom and, to light it, my dad's old fluorescent desk lamp, from the '70s, was brought in: this cool, buzzing, even light was downright eerie. (Not long after, I got my own desk lamp, which took an incandescent I haven't seen that fluorescent in more than thirty years.) About a year and a half later, we replaced the ceiling fixture in a frequently used room in our basement, not only getting much more light in there but also switching from incandescent to fluorescent: I used to go down there just to flip the switch and marvel at the difference; I even urged friends to come see.
@@rs12official I don't mind LED in the right context, have had CFL, though most were just OK, but did have an early CFL from Lights of America back in the mid 80's and it was a square ballast that screwed into a lamp socket and the lamp itself was replaceable. Sadly, it was a very early electronic ballast, I think a form of preheat if I recall and it didn't last much beyond 2 years as the early electronic ballasts were not quite ready for prime time then. That said, Where incandescent lamps roamed, LED is now a suitable replacement as there was a time I disliked them due to the light output, but they've improved greatly in the past decade or more. Been using them since 2014 or so when both the light output and the price made then a suitable replacement for incandescent bulbs. But for the right application, still linear and circline lamps still rule, especially if preheat, with rapid start being second best. Basically, I'm lighting agnostic.
@@johnhpalmer6098 That must had been a pretty cool Lights of America PL adapter. I have one that I assume is a newer version from the 90s maybe. It is electronic and I assume it is resonant start, though it could be programmed start like those Megaman IKEA CFLs. It is one of my favorite bulbs that I have in my lighting collection, I love the way it starts up.
@@rs12official It may be, but if memory serves, it did the blinky blink when I first turned it on in the morning. I DO recall it had a bit of a residual glow when shut off at night. the same with the circline fixture I put up in the bedroom that was definitely rapid start. Both were bought in the mid 80's. The Lights of America adapter went into a vintage swag lamp I had over my bed. It was great until the ballast went, replacing the lamp failed to fix it so hence the realization that the ballast was toast. I was in my early 20's when I got them. The adapter unit used a T6 lamp (12T6 or similar). The adapter was square, and the lamp mounted to its top.
Few people know that the tubes lighting up NYC subway cars from 1948 until 1988 - 2003 were powered by DC off the third rail (stepped down). There was a relay in each car that reversed the polarity of DC current every 26 minutes because the electrons and/or gas would migrate to one end of the tube. I saw this flicker and heard the relay click but never knew what it was. With poor maintenance, the relays would fail and then there was an appearnce of every other lamp being out. But in fact every tube was lit but only one half of each was illuminated. I also saw this with my own eyes. Today almost all platforms are still lit with strip flourescent lighting. When the ambient temperature drops below 25 F, dimming becomes noticable. At zero F, the platforms are nearly as dim as they were with incandescent bulbs, which I beleive were 130 V 36 watt (running at 110 with reverse threaded base to stop theft.)
I live in Chicago and all the fluorescent tubes in the CTA trains and buses were replaced with retrofit LED tubes. The LED tubes have exactly the same shape and dimensions as the fluorescent tubes. The wiring is, of course, very different. The fluorescents need high voltage ballasts which the LEDs don't need. Even the color is matched, with the bluish (high frequency, short wavelength) white light. If you look closely, you can see a series of white dots in the "fluorescent" tube. The efficiency is slightly better than the fluorescents, but both fluorescent and LED are much better than incandescents for efficiency. Personally, I am old school and I like the old fluorescents. They also replaced the neon signs with colored LED tubes. Again, I miss those old neon signs that ran on high voltage transformers (ballasts).
many lamps back in those days, including factories were using "T- 17 " lamps( 2.125" diameter lamp). these lamps have been out of production for 45 years now, T-12 lamps( 1.5" diameter lamp) took the place of the larger diameter lamp( 4 foot T- 17 lamps that were pre- heat starting used a 4 pin glow switch starter ,that is also out of production ,not to mention the ballast is "N.L.A also.")
I witnessed this back in the day. The old subway cars had the lights constantly going completely off for a second here, a second there. I assumed it was inconsistent contact with the 3rd rail. Everyone assumed that. What other electrical source was there-none. I did also see that appearance of every other light being out. Makes sense that the relay quit switching every 26 minutes. I actually remember the lights being out for 10 seconds at a time on some train cars.
@@new2000car The old CTA train cars had round incandescent bulbs. Yes, they would flicker on and off. I remeber the big blue sparks coming from the train moving on the tracks, as electrical contact was interrupted many times. They even had trolley buses with overhead wires. Sometimes the electrical contact was broken and the bus driver had to reconnect at the back of the CTA bus. Now, all the buses run on deisel fuel.
Sure they stepped down the DC voltage? Wonder how that would have been done with 1948 technology. Or did they just put enough tubes in series to get to the right voltage per tube?
It's interesting to note that white LEDs are actually a type of fluorescent lamp. Instead of a mercury arc emitting primarily UV rays, the phosphors in an LED lamp are excited with a blue or near-UV LED, a new twist on an old technology. Improvements in LED lighting efficiency are primarily driven through advancements in the LED driver, the LED itself and in the phosphor coating while improvements in color rendering are driven primarily through advancements in the phosphors. Similar trends held for mercury fluorescent lamps as well with color quality improvements being driven by the phosphors and efficiency improvements through better ballasts, improved UV output of the arc itself through gas mixture optimizations and better phosphors that could be held closer to the arc, the CCFL, CFL and T5-HO lamps being exemplary examples of the latter with their much slimmer tubes and intense output.
@YAKUMO RAN Thr advantage in LEDs is their total system luminous efficacy. Since the source is inherently directional with LEDs, you have far less optical system losses. The newest mainstream LEDs have raw luminous efficacy equivalent to that of T5HO (more if you sacrifice CRI or go for some of the latest premium LEDs) so when you integrate those into the luminaire you end up with a more efficient system overall. Build it right and it will last 20 years...this part is simple; keep the LEDs under 85°C, but you'd be surprised how many lighting systems fail to do that! They want it super bright and they want it super cheap which means it's gonna run super hot because heatsinks cost money.
@YAKUMO RAN My CMH with electronic ballast fixtures are the only thing in my lab room I have not converted to LED. Why? Significantly exceeding their performance in both CRI and luminous efficacy is very costly. If they were quartz MH with magnetic ballasts, the conversion would have happened a few years ago.
By the way, it was Tesla who was the inventor of the fluorescent tube, not Edison. Edison stole most ideas. Swan, in the UK, invented the incandescent lamp, not Edison.
Strange there was no mention of the electrical ballast module that's required to make the fluorescent tubes to function, as you can't plug 120 volts into the tube to make them illuminate. The method to change the electric current, via the use of the ballast, to make the fluorescent tubes to illuminate was a marvel in itself.
Because the ballast is just a simple inductor (for 15-20 W tubes in 120 V, or 40W tubes in 220 V), or a combined inductor + trasformer (for 15 - 20 W tubes in 220 V or 40 W tubes in 120 V). In both cases, a trivial technology even in 40´s. If something could deserve a special attention, it was the glow switch starter.
Still holds true today. Unlike a lot of other parts of the movie. E,G. the omission of the planned obsolescence of the lamp cartel. All those different lamps were not produced "to advance mankind", those lamps were made to squeeze money out of peoples pockets.
By the way, it was Tesla who was the inventor of the fluorescent tube, not Edison. Edison stole most ideas. Swan, in the UK, invented the incandescent lamp, not Edison.
They lasted much longer than incandescent, weren't much more expensive, provided a similar quality of light and did not require new associated tech like during the original adoption of incandescent globes.
@@kylesenior Well, There WAS "New tech" as far as "ballast transformers" and starters... But yeah, These were relatively easily adapted to existing circuits: (same voltage AND less amperage, A WIN!!) OTOH, There have been other tech that took a STUPIDLY long time to be adopted: Stereo TV was "adopted" in 1984. (FM radio had stereo in 1961) and FM (radio) itself took until the 1970s to become "mainstream" even though it WAS a 1930s development. In light of "adoption" fluorescent lighting" still wins for how FAST it was universal.
LED lighting appears to be making more and bigger strides than any other light source. LED has the one big problem of glare control which is primarily a fixture design issue.
well...actually th-cam.com/video/FTArleP2uBk/w-d-xo.html ! So no,the technology did not develop and spread over just few years. I mean first steps were done in 1893. Also th-cam.com/video/T0HG6fESChY/w-d-xo.html
I have a still functioning GE “MAZDA” tube from c.1943. Really neat to see how it was made. Update: I got hold of a wwii era fluorescent light, I noticed that the old fixture was able to light the tubes much brighter than later “energy saver” ballasts. Yes LED fixtures now have superseded fluorescent lamps but it’s still neat to see old technology still functioning.
you mean 1983 world fair,when Tesla showed it.And yeah,but sadly,much like a lot of his work...or others,powerful individuals or more cunning ones buried their achievements and took it for their own
@@nikolaivasilev7371 Are you trying to tell me that a 127 year old man showed the world a device that was introduced 44 years before? Hell, NO WONDER no one paid him any mind. LOL.
@@jamesslick4790 meant 1883 ! Sorry for the typo . There are a lot of inventions by both him and few others that were literally kicked aside until recent years.I mean in the America...Tesla,Westinghouse and many others are well known by anyone that cared to learn about them from documentaries and interesting shows,or even mentioned in books in school here.
@@nikolaivasilev7371 LOL, I was being an ass. I do know about Tesla and especially Westinghouse. Many (and I mean Many) members of my family worked for various Westinghouse companies going back to 1905! (WABCO, Union Switch & Sig., Westinghouse Electric & Mfg. Co., Westinghouse Broadcasting...) I'm from Pittsburgh, PA (USA) While the names Carnegie and Frick got respect here, they also got LOATHING. Two names got REVERENCE though: Westinghouse and Heinz. Tesla and Westinghouse were right about AC (obviously) and Edison WAS an asshole. In our home it was TABOO to have a G.E. product! ANY other brand was OK, but "G.E." was "Edison" and thus was "anti Westinghouse". People used to be THAT loyal to "saint" George!
@@jamesslick4790 Both Edison and Tesla created a early form of fluorescent lamp using a primitive greenish calcium tungstate phosphor in the late 1800s. Edison's was conventional with a magnetic ballast, Tesla's was electrodeless and was more akin to the induction lamp. Neither were commercially successful.
@@totallysmooth1203 Oh, dear. Morons everywhere...you seriously have to ask what basic physics has to do with an explanation of the forces on ions in an electromagnetic field? Are you daft?
@@teebob21 Are they transgender ions, or ions of color? That's what's important in America's classrooms today. We wouldn't want racist or xenophoic ions, would we?
I remember back in the day the cement used to seal the end caps would eventually fail and the cap would come loose, this may have been on the Osram brand tubes. On another note we had huge light tables at work and they had 100's of 4 foot Daylight Floresent tubes, they were turned on in the morning and run all day, these tubes were still quite good after over 20 years of use 5 days a week, some had slight blackened ends but the light output was good, none of them ever failed, I guess there would have been a reduction in light output but they were still usable.
it is true that as these lamps age, the light output does decrease( caused by the cathode/ anode filament re- depositing tungsten on the phosphor coating inside the lamp), but the light output is still very good, until lamp failure takes place. I have many such lamps in my house, and I will not replace them with "L.E.D. lighting due to lamp driver failures. I have a massive stock of lamps/ iron core ballasts/ glow switch starters to keep what I have in operation.
@@RolandElliottFirstG , way back when, in the early days, you had a wide variety of colors "WHITE( not cool white), and "DAYLIGHT" that was it. the "AGED" lamps with decreased light output can be verified with a "LIGHT METER"!!!
Roland Elliott I have a bunch of really old T12 4 foot tubes in our seedling starting racks on our farm and some of the tubes are probably over 15+ years old and don’t even show signs of aging. I believe the long life is because they have the original amount of mercury in them instead of the reduced mercury of the shorter life new tubes.
In a big box store where I used to work, the florescent lights were all replaced after so and so many hours of operation, whether they still worked or not. Was supposedly the most economical, when light intensity needed to be maintained.
Let's not forget the precursors to fluorescent lamps called Moore Lamps invented in 1896. The Moore lamps were filled with a carbon dioxide / Nitrogen at a partial vacuum with high voltage causing the gas to glow. Special electrodes were invented to compensated for the gradual loss of gas in the lamp to the electrodes and the glass. Carbon dioxide gave a good quality white light. The first commercial installation was in a hardware store in Newark NJ in 1904. In 1910 in Paris it was a Moore Lamp installation in which Georges Claude substituted neon for the carbon dioxide and neon signs were on their way.
@@sigitasn You're the one with your snide comment "Nice copy paste. And nobody cares who invented, blahblah..." So I see your mentality is horrible you bellend.
@@sigitasn Yeah, and all Brits stereotype large populations based on small sample sizes. See what I did there? Just as wrong as what you typed... mostly. ; )
I'm blessed with a short persistence of vision. So (here in UK) I could always see the hideous 100Hz flicker of florescent tubes. Bad tubes would flicker at least in part at 50Hz. It drove me nuts, but other people couldn't see what I was complaining about. So glad they are gone now.
"...the magical 2537...." That has to be the 'Angstrom Units' which were the fashion at the time, to describe the peak emission wavelength of mercury vapor
Partially correct. UV light with a wavelength of 2,537 Angstroms (or 253.7 nanometers in today's preferred units) is preferred for phosphorescence in these types of bulbs. In low-pressure mercury-vapor lamps, only the spectral emission lines at 184 nm and 254 nm are present.
@@scottkasper6378 ,I know---- "IT SUCKS"!!!!, all you can do now if you want the ""OLD TECHNOLOGY", is to keep your eyes and ears open for existing lighting systems that are being removed from service.
Its funny, we tend to think of the 1940s as been so long ago and the technology of the time as being so old fashioned and antiquated but when you see this, it makes you realize how high tech the machines are as well as their understanding of physics, mechanics and engineering, makes you realize that even back then they were really on top of their game
Yeah people seemed smarter back then, sometimes I wonder if lead being shot into the air from gasoline and forever chemicals like fluorine polymers have subtly made everyone stupider, could just be technology we have now too who knows.
@@thefriendlymadman229 Yeah it seems like everyone is getting dumber, (ever see the first scene in the movie idiocracy?) But perhaps its just because dumb people are more interesting to watch and thats why they steal the spotlight. Maybe there are just as many smart people today as there were back then, they just don't get all the coverage and the "likes"
I wonder who else is watching this in a room illuminated by fluorescent tubes... some shit we take for granted and are phasing out in favour of LEDs (thank goodness, look at those energy savings!), yet here it was revolutionary
I didnt actually think anyone would respond to this, lol... Philips Alto and Alto II guy here, lol, some Sylvania Octrons mixed in here and there but mostly sporting Altos overhead edit because I can't spell
By the way, it was Tesla who was the inventor of the fluorescent tube, not Edison. Edison stole most ideas. Swan, in the UK, invented the incandescent lamp, not Edison.
So glad I was a 90s kid. My favorite store was Kmart. Rows of 8 foot fluorescent. They were cool to watch while they were burning out. Flickering and sometimes orange at the ends and black ends were entertaining. Now I am age 33 with some gray hairs and a journeyman electrician.
But we will be able to experience flickery failing LEDs and the excitement of buying and installing new light fixtures every time one burns out. Well not me, I intend to use fluorescents, incandescents, and halogens well into the future. So long as I can get a hold of them, that may prove to be a challenge.
when you stop to think about it, the invention of the florescent lamp and operation is really ingenious! Unfortunately LED technology has rendered it Null and Void :(
White LEDs are still fluorescent lamps. Instead of using UV to excite the phosphor, blue light is used instead. The phosphor generates the bands of visible light that are needed to accompany the blue light from the LED to create a white light. The phosphor blends vary based on the color temperature and the color rendering required to for the LED in question.
LED lamps will open up a new can of worms as to environmental hazards. Unlike fluorescent lamps which components can be recycled, LED lamps can't and they contain toxins which rival the mercury in fluorescent lamps. Also, LED lamp life is way overstated.
I bought 3 rolls of glow in the dark tape, classic green, deep blue, and turquoise. The last two light up brightly for so long if you hit them with UV light. It makes really nice mood lighting for sleep.
2:43 ... I have the same carbon filament lamp! It was made in 1929, to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of Edison's Electric Lamp! It's 94 years old and it still works!
@@hoodagooboy5981 (LOL) If anybody drops my beautiful lamp, they die! 💀🤣 Yes, it will still work in 2117, unlike today's LED light bulbs, which only work for 94 minutes! ... If you're lucky! ... My Edison commemorative lamp, crafted in wood and glass, is an object of beauty! ... Unlike today's plastic LED Light Bulbs!
@@marcse7en " Yes, it will still work in 2117, unlike today's LED light bulbs, which only work for 94 minutes! ... If you're lucky!" Do you know why we're not still using carbon filament lamps? Because other than the occasional unicorn like yours, they burned out after about 1000 hours. And if you're LED bulbs are only lasting 94 minutes, there's either a serious problem with your wiring or you're buying the cheapest bulbs you can get your hands on. With a couple of exceptions that still have incandescents in those lamps everyone has that get used about 5 minutes a year my whole house is lit with LEDs. I haven't had to change a bulb in two freaking years.
@@almostfm My comment about the unreliability of LED wasn't entirely serious! ... My home has been fully lit by LED since 2011 (12 years!) ... There's nothing wrong with my wiring ... LED lamp failures have been quite low, but nothing is 100% reliable! ... Oh and incidentally, we're not still using carbon lamps because they're HORRENDOUSLY inefficient! Nevertheless, they are beautiful!
@@marcse7en I know there is a firehall somewhere in the USA that has a carbon lamp that has burned for over 100 years and NOW has its OWN dedicated powersupply to preserve it and they NEVER shut it down as that is what "kills" them more then constant burning
I remember my uncle installing one of those circular fluorescent bulbs in their kitchen ceiling fixture. Seemed ultra modern, but it cast such a dingy, unflattering light.
They definitely can, but remember, in the past the phosphors were inferior to what is now available today in fluorescent lamps, and that only happened in the past oh, 30 years or so.
By the way, it was Tesla who was the inventor of the fluorescent tube, not Edison. Edison stole most ideas. Swan, in the UK, invented the incandescent lamp, not Edison.
@@educatedmanholecoverbyrich8890 Edison didn't invent the incandescent lamp, but he did engineer it into a workable system. Swan's bulbs only lasted about 40hrs; Edison's were up to about 1200hrs. Tesla didn't invent the fluorescent lamp or produce any useful innovations on them. Fluorescent lamps were invented by Heinrich Geissler and Edmond Becquerel in the 1850s. Tesla and Edison both experimented with them 45 years later, but neither produced a viable commercial product.
@@johnhpalmer6098 Those old phosphors were called halophosphates. They did indeed have a somewhat poor light quality. In the case of the cool white halophosphate phosphor, the CRI is only 62. For warm white, 52. And for daylight, 75. Newer tubes use triphosphors, which have a higher CRI. Most are 85, though some can get up to 98. High-CRI deluxe halophosphate tubes also exist, but they are dimmer than standard halophosphate tubes, and have a strong pinkish purple tint to them. Circline tubes are almost exclusively standard halophosphate, so good luck getting good CRI out of those.
@@rs12official You are right as far as what the phosphates were called, I just could not recall what they were called without looking them up. Didn't know the Circline were only standard halophosphates. Anyway, had a decorative round 2 lamp circline fixture in my bedroom for a time between the mid 80's and the late 90's when we sold the house and left the fixture in it. It had the 8", and the 12" lamps in it. The fixture came with a frosted white plastic lens to cover up the wiring/ballast and lamps and was designed for a finished room. Came in round or square. Sort of wished I had gotten the square version. Oh well.
That was great…😁 And to say that the low CRI phosphors used at the time were better than incandescent is quite a stretch! Thankfully we have triphosphors now for that! Also the joke at 6:43 was funny!
It is important to note that "phosphors" is a general generic term, since some phosphors used in lamps don't have any phosphorus in them, although many do, hence where the name came from.
I mean, there exist really good fluorescent tubes used widely in the graphic arts as reference light sources. But of course, they cost far more than a common tube. (Like 10x as much.)
When I was a kid in the 1960s It seemed like most flourscent lights gave off a whitish blue light.most homes still used incandescent bulbs back then because they gave off a much better light than flourscent tubes.
@@JRS986 Lamps are rated in Kelvins. A lamp rated at 4000K will have a warm color, one rated at 5000K will have a cooler color. This rating doesn't vary by the lamp technology.
I remember in the 1970s that BLACK LIGHTS were popular. You can get the beautiful fluorescent posters to glow in the dark. To this day, they can't make LEDs to light up the fluorescent posters. They tried (unsuccessfully) to make a dark blue incandescent black light bulb to light up the posters. Only the fluorescent black lights really work. Those were the days.
I was always fascinated by fluorescent bulbs walking through the stores watching them replace them and my dad had many in his shop too bad fluorescent bulbs in this day and age are going the way of the dinosaur
PHILIPS Lighting closed the largest fluorescent lamp factory a while ago, in Kansas, it used to make like 500,000 lamps a day..all gone...LED, finished it off.
I loved fluorescent lamps as a kid in the 1980s. I found quite interesting the way they started when used with a glow starter. Also, they where of great quality. But today, we have to conform with trashy LED lamps and bulb produced in China. LED is a great technollogy, but chinese quality leaves a lot to be desired.
look up the Dubai bulb the "king"? of Dubai wanted a BETTER LED and demanded Phillips make one and made that the ONLY bulb to use in the Kingdome and it is a BETTER LONGER lasting bulb then ANY they sell outside of Dubai
The 2537 is the wavelength in angstrom units which were used in spectroscopy until around 1960. An angstrom is now defined as exactly 0.1 nm and is roughly equal to the diameter of a hydrogen atom.
yes that's old school 2 I still know some places where those lights are still used most of those lights have been changed and I can still remember when they used the clear light bulbs 💡 they give off more light OMG 12 1O 2O22
yes - as "always" at that time - high quality... everywhere. Even the things which were considered "low"qualtiy. No computers so more brain-power simple as that... Slide rulers, skill and human heart. The point of going down was late 1960's - the 1968's... 1970's were awful - music, houses, textiles, cars, machines, human behavior got much down the hill, quality, plastics everywhere, cheap stuff since then (1968)
I still buy incandescent . Yes I know they are inefficient but LEDs require rare earth materials and they don't really last that long if you turn them on and off a lot . Trump may have been right
OSHA would have a field day these days with all the violations. Workers not have safety googles from broken, flying glass and the lack of breathing apparatus for protection from mercury and beryllium which was the main phosphor used until it was banned in June 1949 so being so toxic.
Hard to believe fluorescent bulbs are still with us nearly 80 years later. Equally hard to imagine that the first LED prototypes had been in development for half a decade BEFORE this film was published!
Nope. Back then the standards of attire suitable for leaving the house were much, much higher. Men would put on a shirt and tie, and women a sundress and fresh makeup just to dash down to the grocers' or drugstore.
@@crisprtalk6963 I love how language changes over time and geography. I watched "Stalag 17" on here yesterday. Made in 1953 the american inmates of a German POW camp sang "Everyone will be so gay when Johnny comes marching home.". Both words started out as street slang but where "faggot" has kept it's pejorative nastiness, "gay" has been adopted as by generations of gay people not only as self identification but the name of a movement from out of the shadows and into the light. I guess "gay" has kept in touch with its roots of "happy, bright & colourful" eh? I do love me a bit of etymology! 😎
A corporation produced this amazing video! Now the scientists cannot even explain anything half as well as this. "Quantum Mechanics is spooky action at a distance", explaining nothing.
Quantum mechanics provides a quantitative understanding of the structure of an atom with amazing precision. It works, but unfortunately no one understands why it works. It doesn't help that we now have lots of youtubers going on at length about quantum entanglement, the spooky part, and so forth which only makes it worse.
By the way, it was Tesla who was the inventor of the fluorescent tube, not Edison. Edison stole most ideas. Swan, in the UK, invented the incandescent lamp, not Edison.
@@educatedmanholecoverbyrich8890 Edison didn't invent the incandescent lamp, but he did engineer it into a workable system. Swan's bulbs only lasted about 40hrs; Edison's were up to about 1200hrs. Tesla didn't invent the fluorescent lamp or produce any useful innovations on them. Fluorescent lamps were invented by Heinrich Geissler and Edmond Becquerel in the 1850s. Tesla and Edison both experimented with them 45 years later, but neither produced a viable commercial product.
And now that they've figured out how to produce those products the entire company is being shipped to Asia to continue the production process, and maximize profit margins.
Most sparkies never cared much for GE. They had the worst service & parts departments. Sure they were the largest supplier of light bulbs & fluorescent tubes once around a time but took them over two years to sell off their USA light bulb division maybe three years ago. Heard nobody was interested in them. In my city maybe 45 years ago he had what they called an GE electrical supply house . More just a store that sold old be light fixtures they were trying to unload. Of course their parking lot never had more then 1 or 2 cars or trucks.
@@rs12official PHILIPS Lighting (biggest in the world STILL SIGNIFY)actually pioneered T5 tri phosphor, when they bought Westinghouse lighting in the 80's, they pushed the tri phosphor technology...they just recently closed the largest fluorescent lamp factory, located in Kansas, LED is it now..not made here...no LED is actually made here, not even the major names, LumiLED, and others LED suppliers to fixture makers, LumiLED used to be a Philips Div, they sold it off, now they are buying into others, for making sure they have a supply of LED for their systems, and have control over price and quality. all 3 bailed on lighting Philips #1 still is as Signify,Philips name still used on products for a while along with dozens of other names, they own, GE and Osram bailed on lighting...replacement business is not what it used to be, when lamps always burned out
@Luis Reyes that was bought out by osram decades ago...big three philips ge,osram. Controlled the industry. Now all 3 are broken into pcs...Philips is now signify,osram split into multiple groups of individual stuff,barely into lighting...maybe led components. Sylvania In europe is not the Sylvania that was under osram they spilt when osram took over sylvania...Westinghouse was bought by philips,Westinghouse name dissaperaed over time...Philips later sold the Westinghouse name for lighting to Angelo Brothers. Abbco...so you may see the name popup..but Angelo bros is not a lighting maker mostly distrusted parts made by others
@Luis Reyes tungsram Hungary was taken over by ge in the 80s to try and compete with philips,then philips bought out for $3 billion lighting fixture giant genlyte,which gave philips more than a dozen fixture brands like lightolier,stonco,and on and on. Philips then was bigger than ge now even in northamerica...as signify it's still biggest in the world,they have full lighting systems ge called current lighting is one part of ge lighting that split ibto components rtc like philips lamps,everything. The empire state building is lit by philips fixture div..forget the name.
@@rs12official , If you plan to keep your existing light fixtures, it would be in the best interest to "STOCK UP" on lamps. the L.E.D. technology is not the "CATS MEOW". the last place that I worked( now retired) had those lighting systems, and the lamp drivers were failing to the point that it was hard to keep up with it( 277 volt lighting system), and yes the lamp drivers were out of warrantee!!!!.
Those were usually high-pressure sodium lights, which have a strong green component. One has to really get way off on the green-pink axis of the lighting spectrum to replicate that sickly weird color that made your eyes think your skin had turned purple.
@@jasonriddell Yes, low pressure sodium lights create a characteristically yellow-orange hue, and early fluorescents had some wonky phosphors going on. However, I'm talking about that peculiar purplish/orangish green that you would get, say for example in a circa 1985 high school gym where they had crappy HPS/metal halide/halogen lights: the kind with the fragile clear filament bulb that gets scorching hot and can't be turned back on for 8-10 minutes after they turn off.
GE also had the opportunity to develop electronic strobe flash, but the flash bulb market was to lucrative for the decision makers at GE to pursue. A retired GE engineer told me that.
Fluorescent lighting absolutely fascinated me as a kid in the 1960s. The peculiar glow of the tubes was incredible to me.
Same here! Well, in the '80s.
Something I thought was pretty cool: I'd hold one end to something medal like a door knob, the other end with my hand, then rub my feet on the carpet to generate static electricity. This made the tube light up just a little bit for a fraction of a second!
You're in good company! 😉 flourecent and mercury street lights were my fav. Always wanted a merc street light, but a flourecent was the next best thing. My parents never understood my fascination with these lights.
I couldn't agree with you more. Fluorescent lamps have a long history, dating back even to Nikola Tesla. His many experiments with high voltage and high frequency lighting were the predecessor of the modern fluorescent lsmp. Today, we have LEDs, but even they cannot light up a poster like a true fluorescent black light can.
@@bob4analog They replaced the bluish mercury vapor lamps in Chicago with orange-ish sodium vapor lamps. Now, the street lights in Chicago are LEDs. Yuck! They are ugly but they work. I miss the old days with neon signs and fluorescent tubes.
I felt the same way as a child in the '80s. Of course, I encountered fluorescent lamps in many places, including stores, my school, and the kitchen at home-but there seemed to be a clear division between where incandescents were used and where fluorescents were used, so that, without thinking, I associated the quality of light with the place that it was in. Then came two shocking changes. One was around late 1988, when I got a new desk in my bedroom and, to light it, my dad's old fluorescent desk lamp, from the '70s, was brought in: this cool, buzzing, even light was downright eerie. (Not long after, I got my own desk lamp, which took an incandescent I haven't seen that fluorescent in more than thirty years.) About a year and a half later, we replaced the ceiling fixture in a frequently used room in our basement, not only getting much more light in there but also switching from incandescent to fluorescent: I used to go down there just to flip the switch and marvel at the difference; I even urged friends to come see.
I loved fluorescent lights when I was little. I liked going to school, stores, malls, big churches, and people's homes that had them
Fluorescent lighting is amazing.
It is indeed. It sucks that LED garbage it taking it over now!
@@rs12official I don't mind LED in the right context, have had CFL, though most were just OK, but did have an early CFL from Lights of America back in the mid 80's and it was a square ballast that screwed into a lamp socket and the lamp itself was replaceable. Sadly, it was a very early electronic ballast, I think a form of preheat if I recall and it didn't last much beyond 2 years as the early electronic ballasts were not quite ready for prime time then.
That said, Where incandescent lamps roamed, LED is now a suitable replacement as there was a time I disliked them due to the light output, but they've improved greatly in the past decade or more. Been using them since 2014 or so when both the light output and the price made then a suitable replacement for incandescent bulbs.
But for the right application, still linear and circline lamps still rule, especially if preheat, with rapid start being second best. Basically, I'm lighting agnostic.
@@johnhpalmer6098 That must had been a pretty cool Lights of America PL adapter. I have one that I assume is a newer version from the 90s maybe. It is electronic and I assume it is resonant start, though it could be programmed start like those Megaman IKEA CFLs. It is one of my favorite bulbs that I have in my lighting collection, I love the way it starts up.
@@rs12official It may be, but if memory serves, it did the blinky blink when I first turned it on in the morning. I DO recall it had a bit of a residual glow when shut off at night. the same with the circline fixture I put up in the bedroom that was definitely rapid start. Both were bought in the mid 80's. The Lights of America adapter went into a vintage swag lamp I had over my bed. It was great until the ballast went, replacing the lamp failed to fix it so hence the realization that the ballast was toast. I was in my early 20's when I got them.
The adapter unit used a T6 lamp (12T6 or similar). The adapter was square, and the lamp mounted to its top.
what did the caveman bring into his cave?
I laughed like a 12 year old boy.
That still is the correct word for a bundle of sticks.
A flaming one!
Paul Lynde? 🤣
Someone's going to have a fun night! 😝
1:10 the BEST line I've ever heard spoken in an old film! Lol. He carried a WHAT?
Yeah, and you thought you're progressive now.
They were way ahead of us! 😛
That was the best line, Had to rewind to make sure it was what I was hearing LOL!!!!
a FLAMING fig
@@rustynail6819 I had to rewind it to make sure that was what I really heard.
Grow up and read your dictionary. It's a bundle of sticks, twigs, or small branches, used for fuel.
Few people know that the tubes lighting up NYC subway cars from 1948 until 1988 - 2003 were powered by DC off the third rail (stepped down). There was a relay in each car that reversed the polarity of DC current every 26 minutes because the electrons and/or gas would migrate to one end of the tube. I saw this flicker and heard the relay click but never knew what it was. With poor maintenance, the relays would fail and then there was an appearnce of every other lamp being out. But in fact every tube was lit but only one half of each was illuminated. I also saw this with my own eyes. Today almost all platforms are still lit with strip flourescent lighting. When the ambient temperature drops below 25 F, dimming becomes noticable. At zero F, the platforms are nearly as dim as they were with incandescent bulbs, which I beleive were 130 V 36 watt (running at 110 with reverse threaded base to stop theft.)
I live in Chicago and all the fluorescent tubes in the CTA trains and buses were replaced with retrofit LED tubes. The LED tubes have exactly the same shape and dimensions as the fluorescent tubes. The wiring is, of course, very different. The fluorescents need high voltage ballasts which the LEDs don't need. Even the color is matched, with the bluish (high frequency, short wavelength) white light. If you look closely, you can see a series of white dots in the "fluorescent" tube. The efficiency is slightly better than the fluorescents, but both fluorescent and LED are much better than incandescents for efficiency. Personally, I am old school and I like the old fluorescents. They also replaced the neon signs with colored LED tubes. Again, I miss those old neon signs that ran on high voltage transformers (ballasts).
many lamps back in those days, including factories were using "T- 17 " lamps( 2.125" diameter lamp). these lamps have been out of production for 45 years now, T-12 lamps( 1.5" diameter lamp) took the place of the larger diameter lamp( 4 foot T- 17 lamps that were pre- heat starting used a 4 pin glow switch starter ,that is also out of production ,not to mention the ballast is "N.L.A also.")
I witnessed this back in the day. The old subway cars had the lights constantly going completely off for a second here, a second there. I assumed it was inconsistent contact with the 3rd rail. Everyone assumed that. What other electrical source was there-none. I did also see that appearance of every other light being out. Makes sense that the relay quit switching every 26 minutes. I actually remember the lights being out for 10 seconds at a time on some train cars.
@@new2000car The old CTA train cars had round incandescent bulbs. Yes, they would flicker on and off. I remeber the big blue sparks coming from the train moving on the tracks, as electrical contact was interrupted many times. They even had trolley buses with overhead wires. Sometimes the electrical contact was broken and the bus driver had to reconnect at the back of the CTA bus. Now, all the buses run on deisel fuel.
Sure they stepped down the DC voltage? Wonder how that would have been done with 1948 technology. Or did they just put enough tubes in series to get to the right voltage per tube?
It's interesting to note that white LEDs are actually a type of fluorescent lamp. Instead of a mercury arc emitting primarily UV rays, the phosphors in an LED lamp are excited with a blue or near-UV LED, a new twist on an old technology. Improvements in LED lighting efficiency are primarily driven through advancements in the LED driver, the LED itself and in the phosphor coating while improvements in color rendering are driven primarily through advancements in the phosphors.
Similar trends held for mercury fluorescent lamps as well with color quality improvements being driven by the phosphors and efficiency improvements through better ballasts, improved UV output of the arc itself through gas mixture optimizations and better phosphors that could be held closer to the arc, the CCFL, CFL and T5-HO lamps being exemplary examples of the latter with their much slimmer tubes and intense output.
@YAKUMO RAN Thr advantage in LEDs is their total system luminous efficacy. Since the source is inherently directional with LEDs, you have far less optical system losses. The newest mainstream LEDs have raw luminous efficacy equivalent to that of T5HO (more if you sacrifice CRI or go for some of the latest premium LEDs) so when you integrate those into the luminaire you end up with a more efficient system overall.
Build it right and it will last 20 years...this part is simple; keep the LEDs under 85°C, but you'd be surprised how many lighting systems fail to do that! They want it super bright and they want it super cheap which means it's gonna run super hot because heatsinks cost money.
@YAKUMO RAN That's unfortunate. A lot of people in the USA have a negative opinion of LEDs as well due to this same issue.
@YAKUMO RAN My CMH with electronic ballast fixtures are the only thing in my lab room I have not converted to LED. Why? Significantly exceeding their performance in both CRI and luminous efficacy is very costly. If they were quartz MH with magnetic ballasts, the conversion would have happened a few years ago.
By the way, it was Tesla who was the inventor of the fluorescent tube, not Edison. Edison stole most ideas. Swan, in the UK, invented the incandescent lamp, not Edison.
Thanks, Mr. Wizard. 🤓
Strange there was no mention of the electrical ballast module that's required to make the fluorescent tubes to function, as you can't plug 120 volts into the tube to make them illuminate.
The method to change the electric current, via the use of the ballast, to make the fluorescent tubes to illuminate was a marvel in itself.
Because the ballast is just a simple inductor (for 15-20 W tubes in 120 V, or 40W tubes in 220 V), or a combined inductor + trasformer (for 15 - 20 W tubes in 220 V or 40 W tubes in 120 V). In both cases, a trivial technology even in 40´s. If something could deserve a special attention, it was the glow switch starter.
Electromagnetic ballasts are older
Electrons are...."just little bits of things". Great film. Love it.
Still holds true today.
Unlike a lot of other parts of the movie.
E,G. the omission of the planned obsolescence of the lamp cartel.
All those different lamps were not produced "to advance mankind",
those lamps were made to squeeze money out of peoples pockets.
@@winston_vanderbilt_ll At least the fact that fluorescent is the best choice still holds up
By the way, it was Tesla who was the inventor of the fluorescent tube, not Edison. Edison stole most ideas. Swan, in the UK, invented the incandescent lamp, not Edison.
I dig your channel I'm so glad you save these films. It's beautiful American history.
Florescent lighting had to have one of the quickest "adoption" rate of any "tech". Within a few years of 1939, they were seemingly everywhere.
They lasted much longer than incandescent, weren't much more expensive, provided a similar quality of light and did not require new associated tech like during the original adoption of incandescent globes.
@@kylesenior Well, There WAS "New tech" as far as "ballast transformers" and starters... But yeah, These were relatively easily adapted to existing circuits: (same voltage AND less amperage, A WIN!!) OTOH, There have been other tech that took a STUPIDLY long time to be adopted: Stereo TV was "adopted" in 1984. (FM radio had stereo in 1961) and FM (radio) itself took until the 1970s to become "mainstream" even though it WAS a 1930s development. In light of "adoption" fluorescent lighting" still wins for how FAST it was universal.
LED lighting appears to be making more and bigger strides than any other light source. LED has the one big problem of glare control which is primarily a fixture design issue.
well...actually th-cam.com/video/FTArleP2uBk/w-d-xo.html ! So no,the technology did not develop and spread over just few years. I mean first steps were done in 1893.
Also th-cam.com/video/T0HG6fESChY/w-d-xo.html
LED garbage is growing at a very fast rate as well.
I have a still functioning GE “MAZDA” tube from c.1943. Really neat to see how it was made. Update: I got hold of a wwii era fluorescent light, I noticed that the old fixture was able to light the tubes much brighter than later “energy saver” ballasts. Yes LED fixtures now have superseded fluorescent lamps but it’s still neat to see old technology still functioning.
The fluorescent light actually made its public debut at the 1939 New York World's Fair.
you mean 1983 world fair,when Tesla showed it.And yeah,but sadly,much like a lot of his work...or others,powerful individuals or more cunning ones buried their achievements and took it for their own
@@nikolaivasilev7371 Are you trying to tell me that a 127 year old man showed the world a device that was introduced 44 years before? Hell, NO WONDER no one paid him any mind. LOL.
@@jamesslick4790 meant 1883 ! Sorry for the typo . There are a lot of inventions by both him and few others that were literally kicked aside until recent years.I mean in the America...Tesla,Westinghouse and many others are well known by anyone that cared to learn about them from documentaries and interesting shows,or even mentioned in books in school here.
@@nikolaivasilev7371 LOL, I was being an ass. I do know about Tesla and especially Westinghouse. Many (and I mean Many) members of my family worked for various Westinghouse companies going back to 1905! (WABCO, Union Switch & Sig., Westinghouse Electric & Mfg. Co., Westinghouse Broadcasting...) I'm from Pittsburgh, PA (USA) While the names Carnegie and Frick got respect here, they also got LOATHING. Two names got REVERENCE though: Westinghouse and Heinz. Tesla and Westinghouse were right about AC (obviously) and Edison WAS an asshole. In our home it was TABOO to have a G.E. product! ANY other brand was OK, but "G.E." was "Edison" and thus was "anti Westinghouse". People used to be THAT loyal to "saint" George!
@@jamesslick4790 Both Edison and Tesla created a early form of fluorescent lamp using a primitive greenish calcium tungstate phosphor in the late 1800s. Edison's was conventional with a magnetic ballast, Tesla's was electrodeless and was more akin to the induction lamp. Neither were commercially successful.
I wish they'd covered more stuff like this when I went to school.
Did you take physics? This is basic high school physics.
@@teebob21 Basic high school physics is Democrat indoctrination now. What does physic have to do with it?
@@totallysmooth1203 Oh, dear. Morons everywhere...you seriously have to ask what basic physics has to do with an explanation of the forces on ions in an electromagnetic field? Are you daft?
@@teebob21 Are they transgender ions, or ions of color? That's what's important in America's classrooms today. We wouldn't want racist or xenophoic ions, would we?
@@totallysmooth1203 None of that is relevant to a physics class, and only a doofus would think that's actually being taught in a high school science
Don't know if all these people are alive right now but there is a sense of indebtedness. Long live G.E.
Nope, they're all with choir invisible.
I remember back in the day the cement used to seal the end caps would eventually fail and the cap would come loose, this may have been on the Osram brand tubes.
On another note we had huge light tables at work and they had 100's of 4 foot Daylight Floresent tubes, they were turned on in the morning and run all day, these tubes were still quite good after over 20 years of use 5 days a week, some had slight blackened ends but the light output was good, none of them ever failed, I guess there would have been a reduction in light output but they were still usable.
it is true that as these lamps age, the light output does decrease( caused by the cathode/ anode filament re- depositing tungsten on the phosphor coating inside the lamp), but the light output is still very good, until lamp failure takes place. I have many such lamps in my house, and I will not replace them with "L.E.D. lighting due to lamp driver failures. I have a massive stock of lamps/ iron core ballasts/ glow switch starters to keep what I have in operation.
@@gregoryclemen1870 yes when compared against new tubes the very old ones look to be about 10 to 15 percent less light output
@@RolandElliottFirstG , way back when, in the early days, you had a wide variety of colors "WHITE( not cool white), and "DAYLIGHT" that was it. the "AGED" lamps with decreased light output can be verified with a "LIGHT METER"!!!
Roland Elliott I have a bunch of really old T12 4 foot tubes in our seedling starting racks on our farm and some of the tubes are probably over 15+ years old and don’t even show signs of aging. I believe the long life is because they have the original amount of mercury in them instead of the reduced mercury of the shorter life new tubes.
In a big box store where I used to work, the florescent lights were all replaced after so and so many hours of operation, whether they still worked or not. Was supposedly the most economical, when light intensity needed to be maintained.
Gotta love the buildup for these videos, always starting from prehistory and giving you a breakdown of every event that lead up to the invention of x
1:10 wow that escalated quickly
Let's not forget the precursors to fluorescent lamps called Moore Lamps invented in 1896. The Moore lamps were filled with a carbon dioxide / Nitrogen at a partial vacuum with high voltage causing the gas to glow. Special electrodes were invented to compensated for the gradual loss of gas in the lamp to the electrodes and the glass. Carbon dioxide gave a good quality white light. The first commercial installation was in a hardware store in Newark NJ in 1904.
In 1910 in Paris it was a Moore Lamp installation in which Georges Claude substituted neon for the carbon dioxide and neon signs were on their way.
Nice copy paste. And nobody cares who invented, blahblah...
@@sigitasn Blow it out your ass 😂
@@tihzho Yeah, i see americans mentality is horrible. You reminded me that.
@@sigitasn You're the one with your snide comment "Nice copy paste. And nobody cares who invented, blahblah..." So I see your mentality is horrible you bellend.
@@sigitasn Yeah, and all Brits stereotype large populations based on small sample sizes. See what I did there? Just as wrong as what you typed... mostly. ; )
I'm blessed with a short persistence of vision. So (here in UK) I could always see the hideous 100Hz flicker of florescent tubes. Bad tubes would flicker at least in part at 50Hz. It drove me nuts, but other people couldn't see what I was complaining about. So glad they are gone now.
try NYC subway stations 25 HZ mains
That cave was just screaming for accessories.
LOL Oh Yes! those bare rock walls just HAD TO GO!
All the boldfaced lies in this movie, are hard to watch.
hence the "dragging".
wow cavemen must have had a great meat rack
It had "Flaming Faggots" what else would you need? LOL
"...the magical 2537...." That has to be the 'Angstrom Units' which were the fashion at the time, to describe the peak emission wavelength of mercury vapor
Partially correct. UV light with a wavelength of 2,537 Angstroms (or 253.7 nanometers in today's preferred units) is preferred for phosphorescence in these types of bulbs. In low-pressure mercury-vapor lamps, only the spectral emission lines at 184 nm and 254 nm are present.
I’m sold. Where can I get such a bulb?
you can get the lamps( for now), but you can not get the light fixtures anymore( out of production)
@@gregoryclemen1870 damn it!
@@scottkasper6378 ,I know---- "IT SUCKS"!!!!, all you can do now if you want the ""OLD TECHNOLOGY", is to keep your eyes and ears open for existing lighting systems that are being removed from service.
Very sure the narrator is Marvin Miller (aka "Mark Anthony" from "The Millionaire").
He did narration on several GE films.
Thank you for this fascinating video!
Glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for being a sub!
WOW! Thanks, Mr. Hughes! Is it lunch time? I think Mom put PB&J in my Bonanza lunch box. Johnny, got anything to trade?
1:10 Didn't expect to hear that!
UE zakaz świetlówki i zwykle zarowki wrrr , . Ja love you świetlówka i zarowki zwykle ❤❤❤
Its funny, we tend to think of the 1940s as been so long ago and the technology of the time as being so old fashioned and antiquated but when you see this, it makes you realize how high tech the machines are as well as their understanding of physics, mechanics and engineering, makes you realize that even back then they were really on top of their game
Yeah people seemed smarter back then, sometimes I wonder if lead being shot into the air from gasoline and forever chemicals like fluorine polymers have subtly made everyone stupider, could just be technology we have now too who knows.
@@thefriendlymadman229 Yeah it seems like everyone is getting dumber, (ever see the first scene in the movie idiocracy?) But perhaps its just because dumb people are more interesting to watch and thats why they steal the spotlight. Maybe there are just as many smart people today as there were back then, they just don't get all the coverage and the "likes"
@@lander77477 idiocracy is my favorite movie of all time.
@@thefriendlymadman229 This guy gets it. It still doesn't have an official blu ray release
I wonder who else is watching this in a room illuminated by fluorescent tubes... some shit we take for granted and are phasing out in favour of LEDs (thank goodness, look at those energy savings!), yet here it was revolutionary
I am! Philips 830 type tubes overhead.
I was when I was first watching this. GE F40T12, CX35 color! Operating on electronic rapid start, inside a false troffer fixture.
I didnt actually think anyone would respond to this, lol... Philips Alto and Alto II guy here, lol, some Sylvania Octrons mixed in here and there but mostly sporting Altos overhead
edit because I can't spell
By the way, it was Tesla who was the inventor of the fluorescent tube, not Edison. Edison stole most ideas. Swan, in the UK, invented the incandescent lamp, not Edison.
@@Kudlaty771 Phillips PL-S 13 2 lamp fixture
awesome nela park is mentioned what beautiful history
Now it’s over. Future generations will never know K-Mart flickering blueish fluorescents on linoleum floors.
So glad I was a 90s kid. My favorite store was Kmart. Rows of 8 foot fluorescent. They were cool to watch while they were burning out. Flickering and sometimes orange at the ends and black ends were entertaining. Now I am age 33 with some gray hairs and a journeyman electrician.
But we will be able to experience flickery failing LEDs and the excitement of buying and installing new light fixtures every time one burns out. Well not me, I intend to use fluorescents, incandescents, and halogens well into the future. So long as I can get a hold of them, that may prove to be a challenge.
@@rs12official I see better with LEDs but yeah.
That short just screams for lampooning by Rifftrax. 😆
@@rs12official So does your TV still have tubes? :)
so cool... i want one
when you stop to think about it, the invention of the florescent lamp and operation is really ingenious!
Unfortunately LED technology has rendered it Null and Void :(
not necessarily - T5 bulbs are still competitive for efficiency (80+ Lumens/Watt)
White LEDs are still fluorescent lamps. Instead of using UV to excite the phosphor, blue light is used instead. The phosphor generates the bands of visible light that are needed to accompany the blue light from the LED to create a white light. The phosphor blends vary based on the color temperature and the color rendering required to for the LED in question.
LED lamps will open up a new can of worms as to environmental hazards. Unlike fluorescent lamps which components can be recycled, LED lamps can't and they contain toxins which rival the mercury in fluorescent lamps. Also, LED lamp life is way overstated.
@@jrmcferren leds are N O T fluorescent lamps
@@thedavesofourlives1 Heck most T8 tubes are at least 85. T5s are usually 90+.
Throughout WWII Germany had and used fluorescent lamps, in the same kind of long tubes that we used, up until recently. Ron W4BIN
Why is that surprising?
I bought 3 rolls of glow in the dark tape, classic green, deep blue, and turquoise. The last two light up brightly for so long if you hit them with UV light. It makes really nice mood lighting for sleep.
Said with such assertion!
Good luck making this film today , so many things, so little time.
2:43 ... I have the same carbon filament lamp! It was made in 1929, to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of Edison's Electric Lamp! It's 94 years old and it still works!
It will probably still work another 94 years, unless someone drops it.
@@hoodagooboy5981 (LOL) If anybody drops my beautiful lamp, they die! 💀🤣 Yes, it will still work in 2117, unlike today's LED light bulbs, which only work for 94 minutes! ... If you're lucky! ... My Edison commemorative lamp, crafted in wood and glass, is an object of beauty! ... Unlike today's plastic LED Light Bulbs!
@@marcse7en " Yes, it will still work in 2117, unlike today's LED light bulbs, which only work for 94 minutes! ... If you're lucky!"
Do you know why we're not still using carbon filament lamps? Because other than the occasional unicorn like yours, they burned out after about 1000 hours. And if you're LED bulbs are only lasting 94 minutes, there's either a serious problem with your wiring or you're buying the cheapest bulbs you can get your hands on. With a couple of exceptions that still have incandescents in those lamps everyone has that get used about 5 minutes a year my whole house is lit with LEDs. I haven't had to change a bulb in two freaking years.
@@almostfm My comment about the unreliability of LED wasn't entirely serious! ... My home has been fully lit by LED since 2011 (12 years!) ... There's nothing wrong with my wiring ... LED lamp failures have been quite low, but nothing is 100% reliable! ... Oh and incidentally, we're not still using carbon lamps because they're HORRENDOUSLY inefficient! Nevertheless, they are beautiful!
@@marcse7en I know there is a firehall somewhere in the USA that has a carbon lamp that has burned for over 100 years and NOW has its OWN dedicated powersupply to preserve it and they NEVER shut it down as that is what "kills" them more then constant burning
I remember my uncle installing one of those circular fluorescent bulbs in their kitchen ceiling fixture. Seemed ultra modern, but it cast such a dingy, unflattering light.
They definitely can, but remember, in the past the phosphors were inferior to what is now available today in fluorescent lamps, and that only happened in the past oh, 30 years or so.
By the way, it was Tesla who was the inventor of the fluorescent tube, not Edison. Edison stole most ideas. Swan, in the UK, invented the incandescent lamp, not Edison.
@@educatedmanholecoverbyrich8890 Edison didn't invent the incandescent lamp, but he did engineer it into a workable system. Swan's bulbs only lasted about 40hrs; Edison's were up to about 1200hrs.
Tesla didn't invent the fluorescent lamp or produce any useful innovations on them. Fluorescent lamps were invented by Heinrich Geissler and Edmond Becquerel in the 1850s. Tesla and Edison both experimented with them 45 years later, but neither produced a viable commercial product.
@@johnhpalmer6098 Those old phosphors were called halophosphates. They did indeed have a somewhat poor light quality. In the case of the cool white halophosphate phosphor, the CRI is only 62. For warm white, 52. And for daylight, 75. Newer tubes use triphosphors, which have a higher CRI. Most are 85, though some can get up to 98. High-CRI deluxe halophosphate tubes also exist, but they are dimmer than standard halophosphate tubes, and have a strong pinkish purple tint to them. Circline tubes are almost exclusively standard halophosphate, so good luck getting good CRI out of those.
@@rs12official You are right as far as what the phosphates were called, I just could not recall what they were called without looking them up. Didn't know the Circline were only standard halophosphates. Anyway, had a decorative round 2 lamp circline fixture in my bedroom for a time between the mid 80's and the late 90's when we sold the house and left the fixture in it. It had the 8", and the 12" lamps in it. The fixture came with a frosted white plastic lens to cover up the wiring/ballast and lamps and was designed for a finished room. Came in round or square. Sort of wished I had gotten the square version. Oh well.
That was great…😁 And to say that the low CRI phosphors used at the time were better than incandescent is quite a stretch! Thankfully we have triphosphors now for that! Also the joke at 6:43 was funny!
1:12 - Phrasing!
It is important to note that "phosphors" is a general generic term, since some phosphors used in lamps don't have any phosphorus in them, although many do, hence where the name came from.
@@foureyedchick Thanks for the information!
I mean, there exist really good fluorescent tubes used widely in the graphic arts as reference light sources. But of course, they cost far more than a common tube. (Like 10x as much.)
0:47 *Glowing ferrite* ? How is it glowing? (Glowing is not fluorescing.) Fascinating!
Flourite ?
@@beakytwitch7905 Fluorite.
When I was a kid in the 1960s It seemed like most flourscent lights gave off a whitish blue light.most homes still used incandescent bulbs back then because they gave off a much better light than flourscent tubes.
The color observation is true. Advances in phosphors enabled varied lamp color temperatures.
@@JRS986 Lamps are rated in Kelvins. A lamp rated at 4000K will have a warm color, one rated at 5000K will have a cooler color. This rating doesn't vary by the lamp technology.
Same when I was a kid in the 80s.
You can get fluorescent tubes with a 2700K color temperature.
The old tubes were probably daylight colored ones. You can now get warm white fluorescents!
It makes me appreciate this tech!
A lot of pretty and well dressed ladies working in that factory :)
Despite the toxic substances they're working with.
I remember in the 1970s that BLACK LIGHTS were popular. You can get the beautiful fluorescent posters to glow in the dark. To this day, they can't make LEDs to light up the fluorescent posters. They tried (unsuccessfully) to make a dark blue incandescent black light bulb to light up the posters. Only the fluorescent black lights really work. Those were the days.
Only true electron discharge can give you that real 2300+ UV light that will also give you nice skin cancer.
Fortunately I have 3 original UV black lights I intentionally keep.
you can get UV LEDs pretty cheap for that purpose now.
Used black lights to make Halloween decorations with the special glow paint look scarier.
@@garbo8962 greta
Fluorescent lighting always seemed like the most interesting way to make light.
It makes my physical body sick.
I can't stop laughing.
Laughing is good for the soul.
@@illygah I see I made this comment 6 years ago and have no idea why I wrote it. I think I’ll have to rewatch this one.
Bet it was the line at 1:14, wasn't it? 🤨
@@luisreyes1963 🎯
I was always fascinated by fluorescent bulbs walking through the stores watching them replace them and my dad had many in his shop too bad fluorescent bulbs in this day and age are going the way of the dinosaur
PHILIPS Lighting closed the largest fluorescent lamp factory a while ago, in Kansas, it used to make like 500,000 lamps a day..all gone...LED, finished it off.
GE lighting Vancouver closed up and NOW every bulb sold in Vancouver is imported into the country by boat AND that is to "save the planet"
TH-cam really needs something faster than x2 speed for these type videos.
DO ONE ON SODIUM LIGHTS NEXT!!!
Do? More like Find a Preserved Copy of the film
I loved fluorescent lamps as a kid in the 1980s. I found quite interesting the way they started when used with a glow starter. Also, they where of great quality. But today, we have to conform with trashy LED lamps and bulb produced in China. LED is a great technollogy, but chinese quality leaves a lot to be desired.
look up the Dubai bulb
the "king"? of Dubai wanted a BETTER LED and demanded Phillips make one and made that the ONLY bulb to use in the Kingdome and it is a BETTER LONGER lasting bulb then ANY they sell outside of Dubai
That machine is exhausting. =)
I like the sound they make when you turn them on
@8:00 2537 -> 253.7nm. weird scale unit they are using.
The 2537 is the wavelength in angstrom units which were used in spectroscopy until around 1960. An angstrom is now defined as exactly 0.1 nm and is roughly equal to the diameter of a hydrogen atom.
Who invented the florescent light?
Had a job as a lamp maker, I was told I had a bright future.
it's a tough job. Eventually you burn out.
Yeah, until the Chinese came along.
@@misterwhipple2870 did you miss his joke? Because you comment looks like you missed the joke
@@jaykoerner One of the comments is missing. Now I can't remember what I was answering to.
09:00 The lady is loving the lamp 😇
yes that's old school 2 I still know some places where those lights are still used most of those lights have been changed and I can still remember when they used the clear light bulbs 💡 they give off more light OMG 12 1O 2O22
What about the ballast and the old starter before rapid start
What about it?
7:04 :) love animation
yes - as "always" at that time - high quality... everywhere. Even the things which were considered "low"qualtiy.
No computers so more brain-power simple as that... Slide rulers, skill and human heart.
The point of going down was late 1960's - the 1968's... 1970's were awful - music, houses, textiles, cars, machines, human behavior got much down the hill, quality, plastics everywhere, cheap stuff since then (1968)
LED lighting has practically taking over now.
Sadly
I still buy incandescent . Yes I know they are inefficient but LEDs require rare earth materials and they don't really last that long if you turn them on and off a lot . Trump may have been right
@@teakkaye5364 There are more issues to LED than just that!
1:14 a flaming what?
I mean, I occasionally carry a flaming bundle of sticks into my cave, but it’s with his consent, and then we make out and whatnot! 🤣
@3:26, that looks like a young George Cole?
OSHA would have a field day these days with all the violations. Workers not have safety googles from broken, flying glass and the lack of breathing apparatus for protection from mercury and beryllium which was the main phosphor used until it was banned in June 1949 so being so toxic.
Those videos were very didactic and well made back then! Unlike today's shitty ones.
1:15 oh man that's pretty spicy based AF I told you these were the golden years
1:15 Brings new meaning to Homo Habilis.
The original quote made me smirk, but *that* made me laugh...
Gives new meaning to "light in the loafers" too! I can't stop laughing!
Hard to believe fluorescent bulbs are still with us nearly 80 years later. Equally hard to imagine that the first LED prototypes had been in development for half a decade BEFORE this film was published!
are they designed to explode intentionally or mistaken?
He said "flaming faggot" holy shit! I've never heard that word used as an actual word.
Sorry, electricity costs at 16:29 are not going down if you're hooked to Alliant Energy like I am. REC is way better hookup. Local and friendly also.
"Alliant Energy" Who or what are they?
the magic number 37 shows up prominently in this video. yay!
Great film.Love to see a quality film on LED lighting .
any tube unconnected to anything can illuminate with as little as 1 watt of RF close to antenna.
induction lamps / cathodeless florescent lamps are a thing
10:58 She's just showing off, isn't she? Also, how much you wanna bet all these women were told ahead of time that they'd be on film?
Note that they were instructed to act like machines with no interaction.
enlightened!
"2 trillions of an inch"
made my day
Her QC reports are still in storage at GE.
Her QC reports remaining on company property after all this time is awesome.
Looks like the factory girls were told to wear their party dresses for the filming.
At 14:45 a QA inspector checks out a fluorescent tube for safety for UL (Underwriter's Laboratories). 🥽
Nope. Back then the standards of attire suitable for leaving the house were much, much higher. Men would put on a shirt and tie, and women a sundress and fresh makeup just to dash down to the grocers' or drugstore.
@@teebob21 Well written. Yesteryear.
很罕见的视频，但是为啥声音那么小？？？
16:25 “the steady lowering cost of electricity”
That did not age well 😄
actually it DID till we started "hating" on Nuclear and is still LOWER then GAS prices over the same period
At 01:11 this isn't sounding like the type of thing I thought it was! 😆
makes a reappearance at 1:40 🤣
@@crisprtalk6963 I love how language changes over time and geography. I watched "Stalag 17" on here yesterday. Made in 1953 the american inmates of a German POW camp sang "Everyone will be so gay when Johnny comes marching home.".
Both words started out as street slang but where "faggot" has kept it's pejorative nastiness, "gay" has been adopted as by generations of gay people not only as self identification but the name of a movement from out of the shadows and into the light.
I guess "gay" has kept in touch with its roots of "happy, bright & colourful" eh?
I do love me a bit of etymology! 😎
3:22 behold the scientist inventing the milk shake.
Big shout out to those blinking old fluoro lights
that is only on lamps that are in "PRE- HEAT " circuits that take glow switch starters!!!.
1:15 did he say what i thought he said?
"Pretty, isn't it? I mean the liquid in the tube."
A corporation produced this amazing video! Now the scientists cannot even explain anything half as well as this. "Quantum Mechanics is spooky action at a distance", explaining nothing.
Quantum mechanics provides a quantitative understanding of the structure of an atom with amazing precision. It works, but unfortunately no one understands why it works. It doesn't help that we now have lots of youtubers going on at length about quantum entanglement, the spooky part, and so forth which only makes it worse.
By the way, it was Tesla who was the inventor of the fluorescent tube, not Edison. Edison stole most ideas. Swan, in the UK, invented the incandescent lamp, not Edison.
@@educatedmanholecoverbyrich8890 Edison didn't invent the incandescent lamp, but he did engineer it into a workable system. Swan's bulbs only lasted about 40hrs; Edison's were up to about 1200hrs.
Tesla didn't invent the fluorescent lamp or produce any useful innovations on them. Fluorescent lamps were invented by Heinrich Geissler and Edmond Becquerel in the 1850s. Tesla and Edison both experimented with them 45 years later, but neither produced a viable commercial product.
Hell yeah
And now that they've figured out how to produce those products the entire company is being shipped to Asia to continue the production process, and maximize profit margins.
10:56 "Watch it, lady!"
These were the golden years 😢😢😢❤
"Your light is my pain" 7:50
Most sparkies never cared much for GE. They had the worst service & parts departments. Sure they were the largest supplier of light bulbs & fluorescent tubes once around a time but took them over two years to sell off their USA light bulb division maybe three years ago. Heard nobody was interested in them. In my city maybe 45 years ago he had what they called an GE electrical supply house . More just a store that sold old be light fixtures they were trying to unload. Of course their parking lot never had more then 1 or 2 cars or trucks.
That sucks. GE is one of the best makers of fluorescent tubes currently.
@@rs12official PHILIPS Lighting (biggest in the world STILL SIGNIFY)actually pioneered T5 tri phosphor, when they bought Westinghouse lighting in the 80's, they pushed the tri phosphor technology...they just recently closed the largest fluorescent lamp factory, located in Kansas, LED is it now..not made here...no LED is actually made here, not even the major names, LumiLED, and others LED suppliers to fixture makers, LumiLED used to be a Philips Div, they sold it off, now they are buying into others, for making sure they have a supply of LED for their systems, and have control over price and quality. all 3 bailed on lighting Philips #1 still is as Signify,Philips name still used on products for a while along with dozens of other names, they own, GE and Osram bailed on lighting...replacement business is not what it used to be, when lamps always burned out
There's always Sylvania...💡
@Luis Reyes that was bought out by osram decades ago...big three philips ge,osram. Controlled the industry. Now all 3 are broken into pcs...Philips is now signify,osram split into multiple groups of individual stuff,barely into lighting...maybe led components. Sylvania In europe is not the Sylvania that was under osram they spilt when osram took over sylvania...Westinghouse was bought by philips,Westinghouse name dissaperaed over time...Philips later sold the Westinghouse name for lighting to Angelo Brothers. Abbco...so you may see the name popup..but Angelo bros is not a lighting maker mostly distrusted parts made by others
@Luis Reyes tungsram Hungary was taken over by ge in the 80s to try and compete with philips,then philips bought out for $3 billion lighting fixture giant genlyte,which gave philips more than a dozen fixture brands like lightolier,stonco,and on and on. Philips then was bigger than ge now even in northamerica...as signify it's still biggest in the world,they have full lighting systems ge called current lighting is one part of ge lighting that split ibto components rtc like philips lamps,everything. The empire state building is lit by philips fixture div..forget the name.
LED lights are going to have an impact on the world's lighting needs.
Yes. When people need new expensive light fixtures every 5 years because we have to integrate LED garbage into every damn light fixture.
it will not be much longer that the "FLUORESCENT LAMPS" will be in production!!!!.
@@gregoryclemen1870 I know 😢
@@rs12official , If you plan to keep your existing light fixtures, it would be in the best interest to "STOCK UP" on lamps. the L.E.D. technology is not the "CATS MEOW". the last place that I worked( now retired) had those lighting systems, and the lamp drivers were failing to the point that it was hard to keep up with it( 277 volt lighting system), and yes the lamp drivers were out of warrantee!!!!.
@@gregoryclemen1870 Yes I need to do that!
Yes.....That liquid in the tube is pretty. 🤦♀️
I always hated the dull dingy greenish light that these tubes casted in grocery stores and at WalMarts, it made everyone look awful.
Those were usually high-pressure sodium lights, which have a strong green component. One has to really get way off on the green-pink axis of the lighting spectrum to replicate that sickly weird color that made your eyes think your skin had turned purple.
@@teebob21 Sodium was the "ORANGE LAMPS" early / low cost Florescent was the "greenish" lights due to phosphor used
@@jasonriddell Yes, low pressure sodium lights create a characteristically yellow-orange hue, and early fluorescents had some wonky phosphors going on. However, I'm talking about that peculiar purplish/orangish green that you would get, say for example in a circa 1985 high school gym where they had crappy HPS/metal halide/halogen lights: the kind with the fragile clear filament bulb that gets scorching hot and can't be turned back on for 8-10 minutes after they turn off.
GE also had the opportunity to develop electronic strobe flash, but the flash bulb market was to lucrative for the decision makers at GE to pursue. A retired GE engineer told me that.
Obviously some other company took up the torch of the strobe flash.