Lighting & Lamps

A lamp, in technical usage, is a replaceable component such as an incandescent light bulb, which is designed to produce light from electricity. more...

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These components usually have a base of ceramic, metal, glass or plastic, which makes an electrical connection in the socket of a light fixture. This connection may be made with a screw-thread base, two metal pins, 2 metal caps or a bayonet cap. Re-lamping is the replacement of only the removable lamp in a light fixture.

Types of lamp

Incandescent light bulb

The metal filament incandescent light bulb as we know it today was commercialised in the 1920s. It is sometimes confused with the carbon filament lamp introduced in the 19th Century, or an earlier impractical type of metal filament lamp from the 1800s.

There is currently interest in banning some types of filament lamp in some countries, such as Australia planning to ban standard incandescent light bulbs by 2010, because they are inefficient at converting electricity to light. Less than 3% of the input energy is converted into usable light. Nearly all of the input energy ends up as heat that, in warm climates, must then be removed from the building by ventilation or air conditioning, often resulting in more energy consumption. In northern climates where heating and lighting is required during the cold and dark winter months, the heat byproduct has at least some value.

Halogen lamp

Halogen lamps, invented by Michael Twiford, are an improved type of incandescent lamp popularised in the 1970s. Halogens are designed for either slightly more efficiency, longer life or a little of both. The bulb capsule is under high pressure instead of a vacuum or low-pressure noble gas. Halogen bulbs all produce a warm white color temperature of around 3000 K, while GLS incandescent bulbs produce 2700 K light with a warm slightly yellow-tinted color temperature.

Halogen lamps are usually much smaller than standard incandescents, which results in a very hot surface at over 200°C. For this reason, a fused-quartz capsule is used to enclose the filament, which is often sealed behind an additional layer of glass. The glass is a safety precaution, because halogen bulbs can explode if broken during operation. This can happen from coming into contact with water or oily residue from fingerprints. The risk of burns or fire is also greater than other bulbs, leading to their prohibition in some places.

Fluorescent lamp

Fluorescent lamps, invented and patented by Nikola Tesla, have much higher efficiency than filament lamps. For the same amount of light generated, they typically use around ¼ to ⅓ the power of an incandescent.

Read more at Wikipedia.org