Tuesday, April 01, 2008
Compact Flourescent Lamps
We've been using flourescent lights for year and years. The very FIRST patent was U.S. patent 889,692 for the first mercury vapor lamp in 1901. The first experimental fluorescent lamp patent was #2,182,732 issued in 1927 to Edmund Germer. A team of GE scientists designed the first practical commercial fluorescent lamp. (Patent #2,259,040) (GE had earlier bought the rights to Germer's patent # 2,182,732.), They went on the market in 1938. That means the traditional fluorescent tube lamp has been available for exactly seventy years.
I remember one day at school, my brother and I found they had dumped a bunch of burned out tubes in the back dumpster and we had an absolute ball smashing them things to smithereens with rocks. I remember a big cloud of white powder rising from the debris.
Later on, in the high school gym locker room, I remember a coulple of the guys started throwing shoes back and forth over the lockers at each other. One of the shoes hit the fluorescent tubes above this guy who was in the middle. Three of them were shattered, and Tony sat there in the middle of this field of glass and white powder. The coach came out, and told him to sit still as he went to get a broom and sweep up the mess. Coach was primarily worried about the glass shards in his hair. No one thought about what might be in the powder. Hell, if that happened today, they'd call out a hazmat team to clean the mess up, and send Tony to the hospital for decontamination, and then Tony would head straight to the nearest shark to file a lawsuit.
My point in all this is that, up until about 25 years ago, no one thought twice about just pitching these damn things. So if people are going to argue that these new bulbs are no good because they contain a trace amount of mercury, well, sorry people. The horse is out of the barn, past the corral, through the pasture, and plum clean over the horizon and into the next county. We gotta start using less energy sometime. We have to begin somewhere. This nation is drunk on lighting and the associated electricity use. We might as well start now. It's easy enough for most people if we're not lazy about it.
"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I found it!) but 'That's funny ..."
Isaac Asimov
I remember one day at school, my brother and I found they had dumped a bunch of burned out tubes in the back dumpster and we had an absolute ball smashing them things to smithereens with rocks. I remember a big cloud of white powder rising from the debris.
Later on, in the high school gym locker room, I remember a coulple of the guys started throwing shoes back and forth over the lockers at each other. One of the shoes hit the fluorescent tubes above this guy who was in the middle. Three of them were shattered, and Tony sat there in the middle of this field of glass and white powder. The coach came out, and told him to sit still as he went to get a broom and sweep up the mess. Coach was primarily worried about the glass shards in his hair. No one thought about what might be in the powder. Hell, if that happened today, they'd call out a hazmat team to clean the mess up, and send Tony to the hospital for decontamination, and then Tony would head straight to the nearest shark to file a lawsuit.
My point in all this is that, up until about 25 years ago, no one thought twice about just pitching these damn things. So if people are going to argue that these new bulbs are no good because they contain a trace amount of mercury, well, sorry people. The horse is out of the barn, past the corral, through the pasture, and plum clean over the horizon and into the next county. We gotta start using less energy sometime. We have to begin somewhere. This nation is drunk on lighting and the associated electricity use. We might as well start now. It's easy enough for most people if we're not lazy about it.
"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I found it!) but 'That's funny ..."
Isaac Asimov
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"The horse is out of the barn, past the corral, through the pasture, and plum clean over the horizon and into the next county. "
And has been on many environmental issues, imo. Global warming is now a political buzz word; a "society" to belong to, people finish their lunch that came in Styrofoam containers and write posts about landfills....the insanity must end some where....but who will be first?
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And has been on many environmental issues, imo. Global warming is now a political buzz word; a "society" to belong to, people finish their lunch that came in Styrofoam containers and write posts about landfills....the insanity must end some where....but who will be first?
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