Talk:Lighting

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[edit] Tesla

Please amplify Tesla's contribution to lighting; I see he has a couple of lighting patents, but were they ever commercialized? --Wtshymanski 21:49, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Alternating Current is very commercial. Tesla was stifled by Edison and his own tortured genius.

[edit] Lighting Design

There are already two articles to which, I believe, lots of the information pertaining to Architectural lighting design and Lighting designer (theatre) should be moved/merged. - Sticki 16:37, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Four articles will help with the ambiguous citations.

  1. Lamp is the specific term for light bulb. Take the entire Lamps section from the Lighting article and merge into the article for Lamp.
  2. Lighting Design = general priciples of lighting and light fixtures for all applications. Move content from the first two paragraphes of stage_lighting.
  3. Architectural lighting = techniques and light "fixtures" specific to buildings and landscape. The top half of the Lighting article (up to Types of conventional theatrical fixtures) to be edited for accuracy and merged into the Architectural_lighting article. New topics include photmetrics, glare, specific applications (retail, stadiums, etc.) recommended lumens, rules of thumb, etc.
  4. Stage lighting = techniques and lighting "instruments" specifically for performance events The existing Lighting_designer article to be merged into Stage_lighting, along with light technician, lighting board operator and theatrical electrician, as per merge suggestion. The bottom half of the Lighting article can also be merged into the new Stage_lighting. - Dogears 04:43, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Types of Conventional Theatrical Fixtures

I am going to merge your words on theatrical fixtures to the more relevant articles in Stage lighting and Ellipsoidal. Please continue to contribute to them in their new location! - Sticki 16:43, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Harp Lamp

What would the opposite of a harp lamp be?

[edit] Turn the lights off?

Someone just added the following text to the article:

A myth about lights, especially fluorescent lights, is that they require a significant amount of extra electricity to start up. As a result of this myth many people leave the lights on when leaving the room because they mistakenly believe that turning them off and then on again requires more energy than just leaving them on. In fact, the amount of extra electricity required to turn on a light is so small it's not reflected in electric bills, even over thousands and thousands of power-ons.

I agree with this statement, but it is definitely not a myth that the life of a fluorescent tube is reduced by frequent starts. Each start (that strikes a new arc) blasts the cathodes a little bit, removing some of the material that helps them efficiently emit electrons. I suspect the tradeoff (lamp lifetime versus electric usage) still favors turning things off, but it's not completely clearcut that one should always turn off the lamps for that one minute you'll be out of the room. - Atlant 01:37, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Yes, but I carefully didn't address the issue of fluorescent wear. I said that many people leave the lights on because they mistakenly believe that turning them off uses *more energy*. I'll leave the concept of fluorescent wear to another editor; I didn't feel like opening that particular can of worms. Incidentally, the breakeven point for a $2 CFL bulb and $0.10 kWh is 24 minutes, but if you turned off the lights anyway when you left the room for only 16 minutes, four times a day, for a whole year, with two 15-watt CFL bulbs, you'll pay an extra $0.58 in wear over what you save in electrical costs. Whoo-hoo. -MichaelBluejay 02:21, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
i agree strongly with michael bluejay on all accounts. this myth is way out of hand and the source of enourmous energy wastage. i find it unbelievable how many supposedly educated people hold onto this myth. i have conducted interviews with hundreds of building managers on this point and many believe they should leave the lights on all night to avoid the pulse!!! bluejay is correct about the priorities here. furthermore in my case study experience, we ve found it hard to determine differences in bulb life from different forms of use ( i know they are there but seem to be masked by the statistical distribution of normal bulb lives) cheers Anlace 03:49, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the note. You know, I started thinking, and my assumption of 10,000 hours life / 3-hour test cycles = 3,333 power-ons is suspect. I've lived in my house for three years and turn on some of the lights at least four times a day. That would be 4 times/day x 365 days/yr. x 3 years = 4380 power-ons. But I've never had to replace a CFL since I lived here, and in fact I brought these CFL's with me from my previous residence. I'm suspecting that if the burn time per cycle is shorter, you get more power-ons for the life of the bulb. If I get around to it I'd like to set up a series of lights with timers and run them for a year at various burn times to see how many cycles I get. (e.g., Light A would be 2.5 hours on, 0.5 hours off, Light B would be 30 minutes on, 15 minutes off, Light C would be 10 minutes on, 5 minutes off.) The trick will be finding (or making) inexpensive timers to control that. -MichaelBluejay 04:14, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
You may want to use X-10 and computer control for your experiment; it's pretty cheap and easy. I'll predict that shorter burn times will give you many more power-on cycles but a shorter total number of running hours for the lamp.
I don't think I have the hard copy anymore, but the reference(s) I was thinking about were publications from years ago by either General Electric (likely) or Sylvania (possible) where they had taken extensive life data on the then-standard 96" instant-start lamps and some variants on the good-old F40 48" lamp. At long run times (perhaps even continuous), the life of the lamps was ~20,000 hours. At short run times, it was as low as 4,000 hours. All of this is from memory, so add grains of salt as necessary, but the principle of cathode damage probably still applies even to modern compact fluorescent lamps. I think designs that preheat the cathodes (for example, ordinary "rapid start" circuits) probably don't blast the cathodes as much as "instant start" designs that strictly use high voltage breakdown to strike the arc.
If I get a chance, I'll Google around and see what the current thinking is on all of this.
Atlant 13:39, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Energy consumption

"Artificial lighting consumes approximately one quarter of all energy consumed worldwide." I can't believe it. As a rule of thumb, energy consumption in a developped country is ventilated as one quarter each for industry | agriculture | transport | habitation. Especially habitation is illuminated, and I suppose energy consumption is much lower than for heating. Perhaps It's one quater of electricity consumption? I replaced the term by "a significant part". --Marc Lacoste 10:47, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

"Energy" is commonly used as a synonym for "electricity" in American English. The editor probably meant one quarter of all electricity. -kotra (talk) 08:02, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ancient lighting

I would like to see some credible discussion of (possible?) ancient lighting sources such as those discussed here: http://www.geocities.com/athens/Olympus/6581/ancient_lights.html This may represent the flaky end of the subject of lighting, but on the other hand it is hard to believe that throughout history until the end of the 19th century mankind contented itself with burning fats and oils with no real developments in technology whatsoever. There are historical sources that detail artifical lighting, enough that we know it was an important subject throughout history. So some historical discussion or link to a related article would be appreciated. Amity150 11:36, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Non-electric lighting

This article appears to only discuss electric sources of artificial light. Shouldn't it also discuss non-electric lighting? For example, skylights, candles, oil/kerosene lamps, etc. These are all still used for lighting today, particularly in areas without consistent electricity. Are those not considered forms of lighting? List of light sources has some others, though I think only the ones that are used to illuminate interiors could be considered "lighting". -kotra (talk) 07:55, 31 December 2007 (UTC)