HID and Modern Bulb Collectors

[Dave]

Hey everybody,

I am writing to ask all of you, I am wondering if any of you collect HID lamps, like mercury vapor, high presure sodium lamps, metal halide, self ballasted mercury vapor bulbs, etc?

I collect these kind of things, and I have a few early mercury lamps including a rare 250 watt H-2 mercury lamp, a photo of it can be found on my website, it is here:
 http://www.angelfire.com/stars4/streetlights/h2mercury.htm

I am wondering if anyone knows what application this lamp was used? I doubt it would have been used for streetlighting as it doesn't appear to be a typical lamp ?used for streetlighting at all to me, and also the lack of an outer bulb makes the lamp more suspectible to cold drafts, which may cause the lamp to flicker. I assume this was used in something like reprographic machines, or printing machines or what? Any ?help would be greatly appreciated!

Also I am sure some of you collect modern bulbs, I mean the ones that are unique and interesting, just for fun? I collect some modern bulbs, especially those made by small US companies which are unfortunately disappearing fast, as well as those bulbs sold in certain countries which are interesting to me. Such as some bulbs that are sold in Japan, Europe, and Mexico.

The Japanese bulbs I have consist of brands like National (same company as our Panasonic), Toshiba, Hitachi, etc.

The European bulbs, well the brands are similar to ours but there are some smaller companies there which are interesting, and also in the UK the Mazda name is still used, and owned by GE (Philips owns the Mazda name in France).

Best...

D---

[James]

Hi Dave,

Greetings from another collector with an interest in the HID and modern technologies as well!

The H-2 250W mercury lamp was intended primarily for industrial lighting in factories where colour quality was of little concern.  I haven't come across it being employed in streetlighting service but that's not to say that such a market didn't exist.

The H-1 style 400W lamp was of course the first in this field, and proved quite popular because of the large electricity saving over incandescent lamps (the 400W mercury was designed to replace 1000W incandescent).  However its high luminous flux restricted it to use in buildings with high ceilings, the glare being too high and the light distribution rather poor when it was mounted at lower heights.

It was recognised that there was a demand for mercury lighting in factories having lower ceilings and the smaller 250W H2 was developed initially for this application.  It was not successful though because it didn't offer such a big improvement in efficacy, partly owing to the lack of an outer bulb.  The outer had been omitted to reduce the price of the lamp and encourage its use, but it turned out that customers would rather pay the full price and get much better performance.  It was supersed around 1938 by the H5, a type having a quartz arc tube sealed within an outer bulb to reduce heat losses and maximise its efficacy.  I think since it took several years for mercury streetlighting to become popular in USA, and your country probably only seriously adopted the concept once the more efficient H5 was on the scene.

Incidentally the market for H-2 must have been fairly significant during the few years when it was the only 250W mercury lamp for sale in USA - as recently as 1966 GE was still listing the H-2 for sale for replacement purposes!

BTW you can read more on this lamp at http://www.lamptech.co.uk/Spec%20Sheets/GE%20H2.htm

Best regards!

James