WEBVTT Kind: captions 00:00:00.080 --> 00:00:03.181 You’ve no doubt seen plenty of fluorescent lights, 00:00:03.181 --> 00:00:05.683 but have you ever seen one like this? 00:00:05.683 --> 00:00:08.562 It may not seem all that strange at first glance, 00:00:08.562 --> 00:00:13.163 after all there have been plenty of weird fluorescent lamp designs over the years. 00:00:13.163 --> 00:00:16.607 But this one’s missing a pretty crucial part: 00:00:16.607 --> 00:00:18.964 the electrical connections. 00:00:18.964 --> 00:00:24.934 Your typical fluorescent tube has little wires attached to pins which stick out of the glass at each end, 00:00:24.934 --> 00:00:28.606 and they connect to electrodes inside the tube. 00:00:28.606 --> 00:00:33.869 Those wires are then connected to a ballast and starter which together place a voltage on  the electrodes 00:00:33.869 --> 00:00:37.654 to pump electricity through the lamp which makes it glow. 00:00:37.654 --> 00:00:41.725 But this… this is just a glass tube. 00:00:42.689 --> 00:00:44.459 How’s that supposed to work? 00:00:44.858 --> 00:00:47.228 Well, with these. 00:00:47.228 --> 00:00:51.341 The tube is designed to be held in place by a pair of… 00:00:51.341 --> 00:00:53.752 let’s call them electromagnets. 00:00:53.752 --> 00:00:56.809 That’s not exactly the right word which will become clear in a moment 00:00:56.809 --> 00:01:03.358 but each one of them is formed by wrapping a wire around a ferrite core several times. 00:01:03.358 --> 00:01:06.521 With the help of electronics inside this driver unit, 00:01:06.521 --> 00:01:09.966 a high-frequency alternating current is sent through the wires 00:01:09.966 --> 00:01:17.173 which then causes a magnetic field to repeatedly form, collapse, and form again inside the ferrite cores. 00:01:17.605 --> 00:01:20.610 Now, if you know a little bit about power transformers, 00:01:20.610 --> 00:01:26.395 then if we take the tube out of the picture for a moment and look at a core by itself, 00:01:26.395 --> 00:01:33.228 then what we’re looking at appears to be a toroidal power transformer that somebody forgot to finish. 00:01:33.228 --> 00:01:39.189 See, usually we’d have at least two coils of wire wrapped around one of these cores. 00:01:39.189 --> 00:01:44.218 When we run alternating current through the first coil of wire, called the primary winding, 00:01:44.218 --> 00:01:48.369 it will induce a rapidly changing magnetic field through the core 00:01:48.369 --> 00:01:54.041 which in turn induces a voltage on the other coil of wire known as the secondary winding. 00:01:54.407 --> 00:01:58.570 When that secondary winding is part of a circuit, current will flow 00:01:58.570 --> 00:02:07.039 and the upshot is that energy is transferred from the primary winding, through the core, and into the secondary winding. 00:02:07.039 --> 00:02:11.593 We often do this because the secondary winding will produce a different voltage 00:02:11.593 --> 00:02:16.785 when it has a different number of turns around the core compared to the primary. 00:02:16.785 --> 00:02:20.844 But here, there isn’t a secondary winding! 00:02:20.844 --> 00:02:22.781 It just doesn’t exist. 00:02:22.781 --> 00:02:25.936 That is, until I put the tube back. 00:02:25.936 --> 00:02:31.415 This lamp isn’t a literal wire, of course, but once I have it enclosed by the core 00:02:31.415 --> 00:02:38.357 it does indeed form a loop in the exact same way a single turn secondary winding would. 00:02:38.357 --> 00:02:47.499 It looks a little strange because it’s going way over there before looping back to the core, but that’s what it is. 00:02:47.499 --> 00:02:53.863 Now, because this lamp is so large, we need a second core positioned on the other end of the tube, 00:02:53.863 --> 00:02:57.526 but they’re wired together and so act as one. 00:02:57.526 --> 00:03:03.732 When the alternating current being sent through the wires by this driver unit induces magnetic fields in the cores, 00:03:03.732 --> 00:03:08.510 those fields then induce a voltage  inside the fluorescent tube. 00:03:08.510 --> 00:03:15.518 And, because it’s formed in a loop, that results in current flow which causes the lamp to light. 00:03:15.518 --> 00:03:19.555 For that reason, this is known as an  induction lamp. 00:03:19.555 --> 00:03:25.477 The actual light it produces is the result of the exact same principle as an ordinary fluorescent tube: 00:03:25.477 --> 00:03:33.415 a low-pressure arc discharge is produced by passing current through an ionized mixture of mercury vapor and a noble gas such as argon, 00:03:33.415 --> 00:03:38.279 and as electrons collide with the mercury atoms the mercury emits ultraviolet light 00:03:38.279 --> 00:03:42.725 which is then converted to visible light by the phosphors coating the glass. 00:03:42.725 --> 00:03:48.884 But rather than use electrodes  reaching inside the tube in order to pass current through the gas, 00:03:48.884 --> 00:03:54.080 current flow is generated  externally via electromagnetic induction. 00:03:54.640 --> 00:03:56.458 Why would we want that? 00:03:56.458 --> 00:03:59.120 Well first, it’s pretty cool! 00:03:59.120 --> 00:04:07.920 But also this particular lamp has a power rating of 200W and a light output in the neighborhood of 16,000 lumens. 00:04:07.920 --> 00:04:15.357 That is unusually powerful and bright for a fluorescent lamp,  especially given its relatively small size. 00:04:15.357 --> 00:04:22.731 But brightness, power, and coolness weren’t really the main reasons these appeared - operating life was. 00:04:22.731 --> 00:04:28.185 Getting rid of the electrodes would mean getting rid of the weak point of the fluorescent lamp. 00:04:28.185 --> 00:04:34.803 In a conventional tube, the electrodes slowly  wear out in a process known as sputtering. 00:04:34.803 --> 00:04:40.952 This happens the most at lamp start-up, but sputtering still happens throughout continued operation. 00:04:40.952 --> 00:04:44.696 Over time this causes the ends of the tube to darken - 00:04:44.696 --> 00:04:53.301 the dark spots are the material which used to be the electrodes, but as it sputters off it becomes deposited on the glass. 00:04:53.301 --> 00:04:58.962 That reduces light output slightly but the bigger problem is that as they wear away 00:04:58.962 --> 00:05:03.022 the electrodes lose their ability to emit electrons. 00:05:03.022 --> 00:05:08.794 That makes it more difficult for the ballast and starter to initiate the arc discharge across the tube, 00:05:08.794 --> 00:05:15.956 and eventually they will wear to the point the tube is no longer able to start and the lamp has failed. 00:05:15.956 --> 00:05:21.042 As the technology developed we got pretty good at making electrodes which could last a good while, 00:05:21.042 --> 00:05:26.636 and fluorescent lamps would  typically have a rated life of 10,000 hours. 00:05:26.636 --> 00:05:33.140 But if we could do without the electrodes,  the lamp could in theory last forever. 00:05:33.140 --> 00:05:37.380 And, well, that’s the point of this technology. 00:05:37.380 --> 00:05:42.887 There’s nothing to the lamp but a phosphor-coated tube filled with some argon gas 00:05:42.887 --> 00:05:47.740 and a pellet of mercury amalgam chilling in this little glass appendix. 00:05:47.740 --> 00:05:55.907 It has no electrodes to wear out and  this means the tube itself has a theoretically unlimited lifespan. 00:05:55.907 --> 00:06:01.412 Nothing truly lasts forever, of course, and due to phosphor wear and mercury absorption 00:06:01.412 --> 00:06:04.281 these will lose light output over time, 00:06:04.281 --> 00:06:12.375 but these lamps have a rated lifespan of 100,000 hours - a tenfold increase over conventional tubes. 00:06:12.375 --> 00:06:20.144 Operating dusk-to-dawn, that would mean this should last nearly 23 years before requiring replacement. 00:06:20.144 --> 00:06:28.847 Now, obviously, that’s a pretty phenomenal lifespan and so it might be surprising how uncommon this technology is. 00:06:28.847 --> 00:06:32.243 I mean, there’s not a whole lot to this thing 00:06:32.243 --> 00:06:38.683 and it operates on the fundamentals of electromagnetism that have been understood since the 19th century. 00:06:38.683 --> 00:06:45.983 Sure enough, electrodeless lamps which operated via induction had been demonstrated many, many times in the past. 00:06:45.983 --> 00:06:49.297 Nikola Tesla was playing with it because of course he was. 00:06:49.297 --> 00:06:55.684 But a practical and effective application of the technology was surprisingly elusive. 00:06:55.684 --> 00:07:01.865 It wasn’t until 1967 that John Anderson filed a patent for a lamp like this one, 00:07:01.865 --> 00:07:08.967 and then it took until 1990 for it to actually be commercialized into a finished product. 00:07:08.967 --> 00:07:11.179 What took so long? 00:07:11.179 --> 00:07:16.174 Well, despite how simple the overall  idea is on the surface, 00:07:16.174 --> 00:07:23.694 it turns out there were a LOT of different problems that needed solving before this could actually become a reality. 00:07:23.694 --> 00:07:32.787 For one thing, inducing current flow in a loop of gas, even if it is conductive, is a lot harder than a solid metal wire. 00:07:32.787 --> 00:07:40.757 To sustain the arc discharge in the tube, the magnetic field generated by the cores has to switch back and forth very a lot, 00:07:40.757 --> 00:07:45.712 so the frequency at which this thing operates needed to be very high. 00:07:45.712 --> 00:07:50.788 You’ll notice the patent shows the driver as “converter to radio frequency” 00:07:50.788 --> 00:07:56.132 and Anderson lists a preferred frequency range of 100 to 500 kilocycles. 00:07:56.132 --> 00:08:00.257 That’s almost reaching the AM radio broadcast band. 00:08:00.257 --> 00:08:06.901 By 1967 it was relatively trivial to produce high-powered oscillators which ran at that frequency, 00:08:06.901 --> 00:08:09.395 but that wasn’t the main issue. 00:08:09.395 --> 00:08:12.032 Because of the required high frequency, 00:08:12.032 --> 00:08:19.486 wrapping wire around an ordinary iron core as found in most power transformers wasn’t feasible. 00:08:19.486 --> 00:08:26.512 At those frequencies, the eddy currents which form inside the cores would cause it to get extremely hot. 00:08:26.512 --> 00:08:30.272 That’s the mechanism by which induction cooktops work. 00:08:30.272 --> 00:08:34.853 But the problem is, that would both limit  the efficiency of the power coupling 00:08:34.853 --> 00:08:41.932 and how much power you could feasibly transfer into the tube before the cores started to melt. 00:08:41.932 --> 00:08:48.323 This meant ferrite compounds, which are extremely magnetically permeable but not electrically conductive 00:08:48.323 --> 00:08:51.656 and therefore don’t form eddy currents inside, 00:08:51.656 --> 00:08:55.538 were required for high-frequency power coupling. 00:08:55.538 --> 00:09:03.042 They weren’t invented until the 1930’s and even though they were fairly common by the time Anderson filed his patent, 00:09:03.042 --> 00:09:05.953 ferrite was still an expensive material. 00:09:05.953 --> 00:09:11.260 In fact, that’s the main reason this lamp gets narrower where the cores attach: 00:09:11.260 --> 00:09:16.106 making the tube diameter  smaller requires less material in the cores. 00:09:16.106 --> 00:09:19.211 But here’s where the story gets a little weird. 00:09:19.211 --> 00:09:25.860 Although this patent is nearly a spot-on description of  this lamp both in form and function, 00:09:25.860 --> 00:09:30.960 the first commercial products using the technology were very different from this. 00:09:31.520 --> 00:09:37.291 The QL line from Philips was the first commercial induction lamp and they looked… 00:09:37.291 --> 00:09:41.025 pretty much like an ordinary incandescent light bulb. 00:09:41.025 --> 00:09:46.701 They weren’t - they were in fact fluorescent lamps which worked by induction similar to this. 00:09:46.701 --> 00:09:53.923 But compared to this tube and its external cores, they were constructed inside-out. 00:09:53.923 --> 00:10:00.182 I don’t have one to show you, but thanks to a donation to the channel from Jeff, a long-time Patreon member, 00:10:00.182 --> 00:10:05.561 I do have this variation which was manufactured by GE. 00:10:05.561 --> 00:10:12.418 This Genura lamp was released in 1994 and it is designed to replace a reflector flood bulb 00:10:12.418 --> 00:10:17.465 but it works on the same basic principle to the original Philips QL lamps. 00:10:17.465 --> 00:10:21.794 Here, the discharge tube isn’t so much a tube as it is... 00:10:21.794 --> 00:10:23.577 a vessel. 00:10:23.577 --> 00:10:28.823 And a single coil, once again in the form of a wire wrapped around a  ferrite core, 00:10:28.823 --> 00:10:35.162 protrudes from the base of the lamp into a hollowed-out section of the glass vessel. 00:10:35.162 --> 00:10:41.071 This evacuation stem holds the pellet of mercury amalgam which is required to produce ultraviolet light 00:10:41.071 --> 00:10:45.178 and it rests inside the ferrite core when assembled. 00:10:45.178 --> 00:10:51.399 An oscillator circuit in the base of the bulb sends high-frequency pulses through the wire wrapped around the ferrite core 00:10:51.399 --> 00:10:56.310 which in turn creates a rapidly fluctuating magnetic field around it. 00:10:56.310 --> 00:11:00.976 That field reaches well inside the discharge vessel. 00:11:00.976 --> 00:11:06.086 As the field changes in intensity, current flows through the gas inside, 00:11:06.086 --> 00:11:09.681 and our desired mercury discharge occurs. 00:11:09.681 --> 00:11:18.552 In this lamp design, the single coil protruding into the vessel produces a magnetic field in a toroidal shape around its perimeter. 00:11:18.552 --> 00:11:23.302 That’s why the QL lamps from Philips look a lot like an ordinary light bulb. 00:11:23.302 --> 00:11:31.855 It’s not a linear discharge running through a tube but more of a fuzzy donut of ultraviolet light surrounding the induction coil, 00:11:31.855 --> 00:11:35.933 which a bulb-shape happens to encapsulate quite well. 00:11:35.933 --> 00:11:39.626 The phosphors on the glass convert the UV to visible light 00:11:39.626 --> 00:11:45.946 and the result is a compact yet very bright light source with an extremely long life. 00:11:45.946 --> 00:11:52.875 The original QL lamps ran at 85 watts and had a rated life of 100,000 hours. 00:11:52.875 --> 00:12:02.640 Now, this GE lamp isn’t quite so optimistic but that’s likely down to the fact that its drive electronics are built into the lamp itself. 00:12:02.720 --> 00:12:05.842 This was sold as a drop-in replacement light bulb, 00:12:05.842 --> 00:12:09.067 so everything had to get crammed into here. 00:12:09.067 --> 00:12:12.686 And since these are generally  operated with the base facing up, 00:12:12.686 --> 00:12:17.138 heat from the discharge would rise right into the electronic components 00:12:17.138 --> 00:12:21.070 which shortens their operating life, especially capacitors. 00:12:21.070 --> 00:12:25.827 The QL line from Philips used an external driver muck like this thing does 00:12:25.827 --> 00:12:29.840 and the lamp itself was little more than a glass orb on a stick. 00:12:30.400 --> 00:12:33.671 Still, it wasn't quite as simple as it looks. 00:12:33.671 --> 00:12:39.243 Because the induction coil was shoved up the middle of the lamp, it gets pretty hot - 00:12:39.243 --> 00:12:45.107 particularly in the case of the QL lamps which operated at 85 watts. 00:12:45.107 --> 00:12:49.607 This was a problem because as the  ferrite material increases in temperature, 00:12:49.607 --> 00:12:55.671 its magnetic permeability decreases which  limited the strength of the magnetic fields it can produce 00:12:55.671 --> 00:12:59.699 and thus the amount of power it can send into the gas discharge. 00:12:59.699 --> 00:13:04.124 That reduces both brightness and energy efficiency. 00:13:04.124 --> 00:13:10.544 Philips solved this by incorporating heat-conducting material into the design of the ferrite core’s stem, 00:13:10.544 --> 00:13:14.419 which by the way they referred to as the antenna. 00:13:14.419 --> 00:13:19.588 From what I can tell looking at patents, GE didn’t solve this at all, 00:13:19.588 --> 00:13:26.160 but since the lamp only operates at 23 watts  the induction coil probably never got hot enough to matter. 00:13:26.468 --> 00:13:33.120 But another issue with the single-coil designs is that  it require an even higher frequency to function:   00:13:33.120 --> 00:13:36.154 around 2.5 megahertz. 00:13:36.154 --> 00:13:43.622 And because these are operating at radio frequencies and pumping dozens of watts or more into the discharge vessel, 00:13:43.622 --> 00:13:47.779 well radio frequency interference was a significant problem. 00:13:47.779 --> 00:13:55.115 To try and help solve it, the glass is coated with a transparent yet conductive material, such as indium tin oxide, 00:13:55.115 --> 00:13:58.896 which absorbs radio frequency energy and  keeps it from escaping. 00:13:58.896 --> 00:14:07.279 And in this lamp, the underside of the discharge vessel also has a metal shield which was bonded to this copper ribbon 00:14:07.279 --> 00:14:11.048 that allows the absorbed energy to return to the circuit ground. 00:14:11.048 --> 00:14:17.521 But, it’s clear that GE at least wasn’t making the strongest promises about its effectiveness. 00:14:17.521 --> 00:14:24.399 They warn specifically against using these on boats as they could disrupt maritime communications. 00:14:24.399 --> 00:14:28.927 And, uh, given that they provided a phone number for interference complaints... 00:14:28.927 --> 00:14:32.696 well I think it’s safe to say this was very much a beta test. 00:14:32.696 --> 00:14:39.960 Now, it might seem a little odd that  the basic idea for this later design was patented in 1967 00:14:39.960 --> 00:14:47.930 yet induction lighting didn’t get commercialized until after Philips and GE released their single-coil designs. 00:14:47.930 --> 00:14:53.176 But it might make more sense if you consider that these external-coil lamps... 00:14:53.176 --> 00:14:56.782 really aren't that different from conventional fluorescent tubes. 00:14:56.782 --> 00:15:06.714 In fact, many lower-power versions of this design incorporated circular tubes which look a whole awful lot like a standard circular fluorescent lamp. 00:15:06.714 --> 00:15:13.133 They did offer higher light outputs, but the form was still very familiar. 00:15:13.133 --> 00:15:23.591 The fact that neither the QL lamp nor this Genura lamp look anything like a fluorescent tube is probably why the technology was first commercialized like this. 00:15:23.591 --> 00:15:25.783 Consider the GE bulb: 00:15:25.783 --> 00:15:36.258 the resulting discharge inside this vessel produces a compact but powerful ring of UV light just under a relatively flat piece of glass. 00:15:36.258 --> 00:15:41.462 This meant fluorescent technology could not only mimic the appearance of an incandescent reflector 00:15:41.462 --> 00:15:49.040 much more faithfully than sticking a coiled tube inside a  fake bulb but it was also much more effective. 00:15:49.600 --> 00:15:58.840 This flavor of induction technology was able to create much more powerful yet also compact light sources than a linear fluorescent tube 00:15:58.840 --> 00:16:02.715 while still offering similar energy-efficiency. 00:16:02.715 --> 00:16:07.771 That was compelling enough on its own to  pursue not only for aesthetic purposes 00:16:07.771 --> 00:16:14.335 but because it allowed the use of fixtures with optical systems that produced much more directional light. 00:16:15.405 --> 00:16:18.480 To a point at least - I’ll touch on that more in a bit. 00:16:19.040 --> 00:16:23.680 Induction technology also solved one of  fluorescent lighting’s little annoyances: 00:16:23.680 --> 00:16:25.576 a slow warm-up. 00:16:25.576 --> 00:16:31.388 High-efficiency fluorescent tubes in particular only produce a fraction of their light output at first 00:16:31.388 --> 00:16:37.479 due to lower vapor pressure when cold and thus they can take several minutes to warm up. 00:16:37.479 --> 00:16:42.475 This lamp also starts with a lower  vapor pressure and thus reduced light output, 00:16:42.475 --> 00:16:45.429 but the warmup time is just a few seconds. 00:16:45.429 --> 00:16:52.135 And the large external-coil lamp is similarly quick - it’s at full brightness in only 10 seconds. 00:16:52.135 --> 00:16:59.841 You can actually observe the mercury discharge migrating away from the amalgam pellet as the tube heats up and the pressure builds. 00:16:59.841 --> 00:17:03.153 But… well, that was at room temperature, 00:17:03.153 --> 00:17:06.176 and these lamps were sold to go outdoors. 00:17:06.176 --> 00:17:11.714 In fact street lighting is one of the most likely  places you’re going to find these in the wild. 00:17:11.714 --> 00:17:15.818 And I live where the outside air sometimes gets colder than a freezer, 00:17:15.818 --> 00:17:22.620 so I put this whole thing inside a freezer overnight to see how quickly it would warm up from truly cold. 00:17:22.620 --> 00:17:28.258 The lamp had no issues starting but, like most fluorescent lights in this temperature, 00:17:28.258 --> 00:17:35.455 the mercury was barely contributing anything and we could see the purple glow of the argon starter gas. 00:17:35.455 --> 00:17:41.566 Interestingly it initially did the same thing  where the light output seems to grow from the mercury pellet, 00:17:41.566 --> 00:17:48.170 but before long that bright spot disappeared and it all averaged out to a very dull grey. 00:17:48.170 --> 00:17:55.880 It took about 10 minutes to attain full brightness so it looks like cold-weather performance is only improved slightly. 00:17:55.880 --> 00:17:58.743 But at least it had no trouble starting! 00:17:58.743 --> 00:18:03.609 Speaking of starting, well now it’s time to come clean here - 00:18:03.609 --> 00:18:08.578 I don’t really understand the mechanisms by which these lamps start. 00:18:08.578 --> 00:18:14.939 See, the gas mixture in these tubes isn’t electrically conductive until it’s ionized. 00:18:14.939 --> 00:18:23.437 The electrodes in a traditional fluorescent tube emit electrons when heated and/or when a sufficiently high voltage is placed across them, 00:18:23.437 --> 00:18:30.960 and those electrons collide with the gas molecules inside  and ionize them which causes dielectric breakdown. 00:18:31.520 --> 00:18:36.139 But with these, all we got is magnets. 00:18:36.139 --> 00:18:44.519 The 1967 patent mentions the use of electrodes in contact with the glass that, when a sufficiently high voltage is placed across them, 00:18:44.519 --> 00:18:49.560 will ionize enough gas inside the tube to initiate dielectric breakdown. 00:18:49.560 --> 00:18:53.564 But this device has no such electrodes. 00:18:53.564 --> 00:18:59.902 A later patent filed in 1995 describes this device nearly perfectly, 00:18:59.902 --> 00:19:08.159 and it even has a diagram which more clearly illustrates the rather confusing way the wires are wrapped around the two ferrite cores. 00:19:08.159 --> 00:19:17.441 But it also mentions a conductive strip in contact with the glass specifically for the purpose of creating ionization points for starting the lamp. 00:19:18.708 --> 00:19:22.103 But again, this lamp doesn’t have those. 00:19:22.103 --> 00:19:28.389 All the information I could find on how this lamp gets started was quite handwavey, 00:19:28.389 --> 00:19:36.264 but my best understanding is that the driver circuitry initially sends a much higher than usual voltage through the wires 00:19:36.264 --> 00:19:43.093 which produces a strong enough electric field that free electrons in the gas mixture are sort of thrown about, 00:19:43.093 --> 00:19:45.278 causing some ionization. 00:19:45.278 --> 00:19:51.180 Basically it’s the same way that fluorescent tubes can start glowing when you hold them near a Tesla coil. 00:19:51.180 --> 00:19:56.198 And once some of that gas is ionized the discharge across the tube can be completed 00:19:56.198 --> 00:20:00.051 after which the driver can switch to its normal operating voltage. 00:20:00.051 --> 00:20:05.882 That may also further explain why the internal core lamps were commercialized first. 00:20:05.882 --> 00:20:12.341 Based on readings of patents, it was initially thought  that a secondary winding would be needed on the ferrite core 00:20:12.341 --> 00:20:16.826 to produce a high voltage capable of initiating a glow discharge, 00:20:16.826 --> 00:20:23.981 but that feature seems to have gone away once it was decided to use the very high frequency found here. 00:20:23.981 --> 00:20:31.787 This patent filed in 1982 seems to suggest that simply by inducing the magnetic field at a frequency of 3 megahertz, 00:20:31.787 --> 00:20:37.869 a sufficiently strong electric field is produced  inside the vessel which can ionize the gas. 00:20:37.869 --> 00:20:43.280 But I still haven’t gotten a truly satisfactory answer,  here, and would welcome one in the comments! 00:20:43.840 --> 00:20:47.683 It might have something to do with the metal  mesh found here, 00:20:47.683 --> 00:20:55.298 and a closer look up the middle of this Genura’s discharge vessel shows a piece of wire at the top of the evacuation stem. 00:20:55.298 --> 00:20:58.764 But truthfully, I gave up trying to find an answer. 00:20:59.266 --> 00:21:07.025 So, with their extremely long operating life  and newfound applications for energy-efficient fluorescent lighting, 00:21:07.025 --> 00:21:10.961 it might seem strange that this technology is so obscure. 00:21:10.961 --> 00:21:15.209 I mean, today we have LEDs and this technology is obsolete 00:21:15.209 --> 00:21:24.140 but knowing that back in 1990 we had a lighting technology with a lifespan that essentially matches the best LEDs we have today, 00:21:24.140 --> 00:21:27.906 you would think it would have taken the world by storm. 00:21:27.906 --> 00:21:29.215 Yet it didn’t. 00:21:29.863 --> 00:21:30.926 Why? 00:21:30.926 --> 00:21:34.411 Was there another one of those light bulb conspiracies afoot? 00:21:34.411 --> 00:21:35.966 Yeah, no. 00:21:35.966 --> 00:21:42.319 See, here’s the thing - the tech is really cool and opens up some new possibilities, 00:21:42.319 --> 00:21:47.317 but not that many and it also came with some significant downsides. 00:21:47.317 --> 00:21:49.866 For one, cost. 00:21:49.866 --> 00:21:58.372 The QL line of lighting from Philips was very much a specialized commercial product and I’ve been having a heck of a time finding original pricing, 00:21:58.372 --> 00:22:01.157 but you can bet it was quite high. 00:22:01.157 --> 00:22:04.509 Not only had they created a new kind of fluorescent lamp, 00:22:04.509 --> 00:22:09.853 but they had to manufacture specialized electronics and the power couplers. 00:22:09.853 --> 00:22:15.428 The lighting system really only made sense in applications where relamping was an operational headache 00:22:15.428 --> 00:22:18.904 or its operating method offered improved safety - 00:22:18.904 --> 00:22:26.237 apparently they saw success in the oil and gas industry due to regulations concerning explosion-proof lighting. 00:22:26.237 --> 00:22:31.077 GE’s take on the technology was sort-of consumer focused, 00:22:31.077 --> 00:22:38.697 and the Genura bulb retailed for about $30 in 1994, equivalent to $65 today. 00:22:38.697 --> 00:22:44.902 But that’s a pricey light bulb especially considering its expected life isn’t all that great. 00:22:44.902 --> 00:22:50.829 It’s certainly much better than the 1 or 2,000 hours you could expect out of an incandescent flood bulb, 00:22:50.829 --> 00:22:55.619 but it was barely an improvement over existing fluorescent technology. 00:22:55.619 --> 00:23:01.764 You needed to really, really want fluorescent lighting in this specific form-factor, 00:23:01.764 --> 00:23:09.820 and I find it interesting that GE really didn’t bother to explain what’s so cool about this technology on the box. 00:23:09.820 --> 00:23:13.934 They're just calling this an electronic compact fluorescent lamp. 00:23:13.934 --> 00:23:18.399 Which is true but certainly underselling it. 00:23:18.399 --> 00:23:25.039 But the biggest issue, and what I think is likely  the main reason this technology never took the world by storm, 00:23:25.039 --> 00:23:29.345 is that it’s still fundamentally fluorescent lighting. 00:23:29.345 --> 00:23:34.997 Yes it was longer-lived, but it still had kinda meh light quality. 00:23:34.997 --> 00:23:39.715 And, because fluorescent lights are very much not point-sources of light, 00:23:39.715 --> 00:23:42.925 it was hard to direct the light these emitted. 00:23:42.925 --> 00:23:46.876 This 200W lamp was originally housed in this flood fixture, 00:23:46.876 --> 00:23:53.882 and while you could point this in a direction, it still casts a very wide beam of light. 00:23:53.882 --> 00:23:57.512 I don’t even think you could describe it as a beam. 00:23:57.512 --> 00:24:04.945 The QL lamps were more compact, but they still emitted diffused light which is difficult to control. 00:24:05.040 --> 00:24:07.527 Take street lighting as an example. 00:24:07.527 --> 00:24:10.961 I've encountered a few induction street lamps in the wild, 00:24:10.961 --> 00:24:17.827 but they all have about as much beam control as a circline fluorescent light stuck in the middle of the kitchen ceiling. 00:24:17.827 --> 00:24:20.134 Because that’s pretty much what they are. 00:24:20.134 --> 00:24:28.632 And the inverse square law means that you can’t place the lamps too high above the street or they just won’t offer effective light output. 00:24:28.632 --> 00:24:33.528 This ultimately means you need many more of them placed closer together. 00:24:33.528 --> 00:24:40.980 High-intensity discharge lamps like high pressure  sodium and metal halide produce all their light in a small arc tube 00:24:40.980 --> 00:24:46.792 which allows fixtures with optical systems to focus the light they produce into a narrow beam, 00:24:46.792 --> 00:24:51.715 permitting the use of fewer fixtures by placing them higher in the air. 00:24:51.715 --> 00:24:56.457 And actually, the Genura lamp demonstrates this downside quite well. 00:24:56.457 --> 00:25:02.360 While it mimics the basic appearance of an incandescent BR flood very faithfully... 00:25:02.360 --> 00:25:03.978 at least from the face of it, 00:25:03.978 --> 00:25:08.241 there’s no directionality to the light it produces. 00:25:08.241 --> 00:25:16.654 Even a frosted lamp like this produces a somewhat narrow beam of light thanks to fact that the filament is placed far down the reflector 00:25:16.654 --> 00:25:22.642 and that is very important to both the character and effectiveness of the light it produces, 00:25:22.642 --> 00:25:25.920 especially when recessed in ceiling can fixtures. 00:25:26.560 --> 00:25:30.103 This lamp simply cannot recreate that directional light, 00:25:30.103 --> 00:25:36.817 and I would imagine that presented problems from both an  aesthetic perspective and a functional one, too. 00:25:36.817 --> 00:25:43.455 It may be the same number of lumens,  but when fired in all directions and not mostly downward, 00:25:43.455 --> 00:25:46.897 the room might be underlit compared to before. 00:25:46.897 --> 00:25:52.781 And let’s not forget that conventional fluorescent technology saw lots of innovation, too. 00:25:52.781 --> 00:26:01.329 If any of the lighting nerds out there have been wondering why I never touted the flicker-free light output created by the high-frequency drivers in these things, 00:26:01.329 --> 00:26:06.913 that’s because electronic ballasts for traditional tubes did the same thing. 00:26:06.913 --> 00:26:09.991 They didn’t operate anywhere near these frequencies, 00:26:09.991 --> 00:26:16.494 but they were fast enough for the persistence  of the phosphors to produce truly continuous light output. 00:26:16.494 --> 00:26:20.730 That also increased the energy-efficiency of fluorescent lighting. 00:26:20.730 --> 00:26:28.119 As a matter of fact, a bog-standard T8 tube is  more energy-efficient than either of these induction lamps. 00:26:28.119 --> 00:26:30.370 And then of course there’s the CFL. 00:26:30.370 --> 00:26:34.088 Those, too, got electronic ballasts and all the benefits thereof 00:26:34.088 --> 00:26:39.605 and they were available in much more modest  power outputs than induction lamps. 00:26:39.605 --> 00:26:44.994 Sure, the Genura lamp is a more elegant solution  than sticking a coil in a fake bulb, 00:26:44.994 --> 00:26:49.983 but… is its elegance worth the extra cost? 00:26:49.983 --> 00:26:53.616 The market clearly decided no it wasn’t. 00:26:53.616 --> 00:26:59.795 I mean, this lamp was sold long before the old curly-q CFL went mainstream. 00:26:59.795 --> 00:27:07.189 Once we figured out how to make those cheaply, small induction lamps like this just hardly made any sense at all. 00:27:07.189 --> 00:27:11.925 And when ordinary fluorescent lights already had a 10,000 hour lifespan, 00:27:11.925 --> 00:27:18.880 well frankly you just had to be extremely committed to the idea of a lamp which could last 20 years without being touched. 00:27:19.534 --> 00:27:22.826 That is, if it makes it that long. 00:27:22.826 --> 00:27:29.993 The weak point in the induction lamp isn't the discharge tube, it's the electronics inside this box. 00:27:29.993 --> 00:27:35.812 And while it certainly is possible to produce electronic circuitry which lasts 100,000 hours, 00:27:35.812 --> 00:27:39.354 well let’s just say there are never any guarantees. 00:27:39.354 --> 00:27:44.366 Honestly props to GE for being so realistic with these lamps. 00:27:44.366 --> 00:27:49.831 The QL line from Philips probably had the best  quality drivers of any commercial system 00:27:49.831 --> 00:27:53.791 and since they were separated from the lamp they didn’t have  to deal with heat. 00:27:53.791 --> 00:28:02.070 But had this tech gone mainstream, we’d no doubt have the same race to the bottom that plagues so many things. 00:28:02.070 --> 00:28:04.970 But of course now this is all moot. 00:28:04.970 --> 00:28:13.360 The LED has trounced every lighting technology that we’ve ever made on energy efficiency, quality of light, and flexibility. 00:28:14.240 --> 00:28:18.173 We still have the same race-to-the-bottom nonsense going on, unfortunately, 00:28:18.173 --> 00:28:25.108 and it’s not like there haven’t been some high-profile issues with LEDs (such as purple streetlights) 00:28:25.108 --> 00:28:29.450 but in general lighting is now just solved. 00:28:29.450 --> 00:28:30.889 We’re there. 00:28:30.889 --> 00:28:34.763 Aside from some cheap builder-grade light bulbs I still have kicking around, 00:28:34.763 --> 00:28:39.745 I personally haven’t needed to replace a light bulb in several years. 00:28:39.745 --> 00:28:44.122 That’s no doubt helped by the fact that I generally only buy high-quality bulbs 00:28:44.122 --> 00:28:49.840 and I use dimmers nearly everywhere so rarely are any of my lights at full-brightness, 00:28:49.840 --> 00:28:50.654 but yeah. 00:28:50.654 --> 00:28:53.935 I’m certainly not pining for the days of old. 00:28:53.935 --> 00:28:59.246 But luckily our path to get here was  filled with all sorts of wacky nonsense like this. 00:29:00.260 --> 00:29:02.855 ♫ electromagnetically smooth jazz ♫ 00:29:03.728 --> 00:29:05.859 And because it’s formed in a loop, 00:29:05.859 --> 00:29:12.036 that induced voltage results in current flow which causes the lamp to light. 00:29:12.036 --> 00:29:13.416 Except it didn’t. 00:29:14.571 --> 00:29:19.596 Probably because… you need to be secured in place. 00:29:19.596 --> 00:29:22.982 Hopefully I didn’t just kill ya, that would be very problematic. 00:29:22.982 --> 00:29:25.683 For that reason, this is known as an induction lamp. 00:29:25.683 --> 00:29:28.867 And I cannot be sitting here with this in front of my eyes. 00:29:28.867 --> 00:29:30.887 …chilling in this little glass appendage. 00:29:30.887 --> 00:29:33.247 Is that the right one? Nope. I pointed at the wrong one. 00:29:33.247 --> 00:29:36.926 I mean, there’s not a not… not a… dada da! 00:29:37.520 --> 00:29:43.040 And in this lamp, [glass scraping sounds] the underside… that I’m sure sounded horrible.  00:29:43.040 --> 00:29:46.394 …have been demonstrated many many times over the past. 00:29:46.394 --> 00:29:48.285 In the… in… ugh. 00:29:50.000 --> 00:29:52.499 One would have to call this technology... 00:29:52.499 --> 00:29:55.307 totally tubular, amirite? 00:29:55.730 --> 00:29:57.309 That one hurt to the core. 00:29:58.126 --> 00:29:59.175 Both of them, actually. 00:29:59.175 --> 00:30:03.046 Hey did you know that Michael used to be a taxi driver? 00:30:03.046 --> 00:30:05.403 He switched to a career in science since he only got one fare a day.