Hydrargyrum Medium-arc Iodide Lamp - History

History

In the late 1960s German television producers sought out lamp developer OSRAM to create a less expensive replacement for incandescent lights for the film industry. Osram developed and began producing HMI bulbs at their request.

Philips produced a variation on the HMI, a single-ended version called MSR (medium source rare-earth). It uses a standard two-prong lampbase. In order to avoid the colour shift during use they added a secondary envelope around the gas-chamber. Several other bulb variations exist, including GEMI (General Electric metal iodide), CID (compact indium discharge; Thorn EMI, UK, since 1990 GE), CSI (compact source iodine; Thorn EMI, UK), DAYMAX (made by ILC), and BRITE ARC (Sylvania). All are variations and different names for essentially the same concept.

Within the last ten years, a lot of research has gone into making HMI lamps smaller because of their use in moving light fixtures such as those manufactured by Vari-Lite, Martin, and Highend. Philips' main contribution after this was the invention of a phosphor coating on the weld of the filament to the molybdenum foil that reduces oxidization and early failures at that point, making that area capable of withstanding extreme heat.

Multi-kilowatt HMI lights are used in the film industry and for large-screen slide projection because of their daylight-balanced light output, as well as their efficiency.