About 20 years ago I wrote up a paper for a class I was taking and I thought perhaps someone might be interested in the content of the paper. It had to do with a new lamp. The lamp would emit almost exclusively in the visible region with practically no infrared or ultraviolet radiation. The source of the light would be the firefly. The total emission rate of the Cuban firefly is about 0.00001 watt with a lumen output of about 0.00785 lumen. Therefore, if we used the globe of the normal 100-watt tungsten lamp we would need only 223,000 fireflies for the same output of 1750 lumens. The rate of rise of light in the firefly is faster than that of the tungsten lamp (0.08 second), so it could be used as a flasher. The efficacies of different light sources in lumens per watt are: carbon filament, 2.8; welsbach mantle, 7.5; tungsten filament, 17-34; sun, 100; low pressure sodium, 102; firefly, 490-570. Sounds like a sure bet to me! Anyone interested in this new light source?
