History
The parent to the modern fluorescent lamp was invented in the late 1890s by Peter Cooper Hewitt. The Cooper Hewitt lamps were used for photographic studios and industries.
Edmund Germer, Friedrich Meyer, and Hans Spanner patented a high-pressure vapor lamp in 1927. George Inman later teamed with General Electric to create a practical fluorescent lamp, sold in 1938 and patented in 1941. Circular and U-shaped lamps were devised to reduce the length of fluorescent light fixtures. The first fluorescent bulb and fixture were displayed to the general public at the 1939 New York World's Fair.
The helical (three-dimensional spiral) CFL was invented in 1976 by Edward Hammer, an engineer with General Electric, in response to the 1973 oil crisis. Although the design met its goals, it would have cost GE about $25 million to build new factories to produce the lamps, and thus the invention was shelved. The design eventually was copied by others. In 1995, helical lamps, manufactured in China, became commercially available. Since that time, their sales have steadily increased.
In 1980, Philips introduced its model SL, which was a screw-in lamp with integral magnetic ballast. The lamp used a folded T4 tube, stable tri-color phosphors, and a mercury amalgam. This was the first successful screw-in replacement for an incandescent lamp. In 1985 Osram started selling its model EL lamp, which was the first CFL to include an electronic ballast.
Development of fluorescent lamps that could fit in the same volume as comparable incandescent lamps required the development of new, high-efficacy phosphors that could withstand more power per unit area than the phosphors used in older, larger fluorescent tubes.
Read more about this topic: Compact Fluorescent Lamp
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“The history of reform is always identical; it is the comparison of the idea with the fact. Our modes of living are not agreeable to our imagination. We suspect they are unworthy. We arraign our daily employments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“All history attests that man has subjected woman to his will, used her as a means to promote his selfish gratification, to minister to his sensual pleasures, to be instrumental in promoting his comfort; but never has he desired to elevate her to that rank she was created to fill. He has done all he could to debase and enslave her mind; and now he looks triumphantly on the ruin he has wrought, and say, the being he has thus deeply injured is his inferior.”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“This above all makes history useful and desirable: it unfolds before our eyes a glorious record of exemplary actions.”
—Titus Livius (Livy)