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Fifty Years of the Gas-Filled Lamp

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Fifty Years of the Gas-Filled Lamp 2 PHILIPS TECHNICAL REVIEW VOLUME 25 FIFTY YEARS OF THE GAS-FILLED LAMP by J. C. LOKKER *). 621.326.72 The invention of the gas-filled lamp, now hal] a century ago, was one of the more important advances ~ perhaps the most important ~ in the evolution of the incandescent lamp. This 50th anniversary gives us occasion to trace once again the development of the gas-filled lamp. The share which Philips had in tliis development is also recalled in the article below. Mr. Lokker, uho wrote this article at our request and whose photograph appears here, took an active and leading part in the development of the incandescent lamp at Phiiips from its earliest days. He was the first graduate engineer to be appointed by Mr. G. L. F. Philips, joining the company in 1908. In later years he managed the department now referred to as the "Lighting Division", until his retirement in 1945. In the year 1879, Thomas Alva Edison solved the fabriken" (Associated Lamp Manufacturers' Selling problem of how to produce light with electricity in Agency). While this brought some peace on the a reasonably practical form. The invention was commercial side, there was no easing-up of pressure demonstrated with great success at the Paris World on the production side, caused by the demand for Exhibition in 1881. This was the beginning of the new and better lamps. Although the production of carbon-filament lamp. Several firms and engineers carbon filaments was substantially improved by set to work to make similar lamps and installations, changing from zinc-chloride cellulose to collodion but since electricity networks were few and far acetate as the basic material, the carbon filaments between, the development and spread of electric nevertheless consumed too much power for a given light made slow headway at first. light output, and the lamps tended after some time G. L. F. Philips, born in 1858 and who graduated to turn black. Efforts made to find other materials at Delft in 1883 as a mechanical engineer, was so for the filament led for example to the Nernst lamp, interested in the principles of electricity, and espe- which used a slender rod of thorium-cerium oxide cially in the carbon-filament lamp, that after a few (1897), the osmium lamp (1900), tbe tantalumlamp years of gaining practical experience, and after ex- of Siemens (1904) and, in 1906, the tungsten-fila- perimenting in a primitive laboratory in his parents' ment lamp (fig.I). home at Zaltbommel, he began in 1891 to manu- Although the melting point of tungsten is not so facture carbon-filament lamps in a former buckskin high as that of carbon, its rate of evaporation at factory at Eindhoven 1). At that time other firms high temperature is much lower. This made tungsten were already producing these lamps in large quanti- better suited as a material for lamp filaments. The ties, and in the early years G.L.F. Philips had to melting point of tungsten metal was too high, how- contend with numerous difficulties. If his brother ever, for it to be melted in any material known at A. F. Philips had not come to his assistance in 1895 the time (graphite was ruled out, for chemical to organize the selling side of the business, he might reasons), and therefore a special method had to be well have had to close down production. Gradually devised for obtaining tungsten in the form of wire. the business began to prosper. Since there were For this purpose a very fine powder of tungsten was hardly any electric power stations in the Nether- mixed with an organic binder to form a paste which lands in those days, the two brothers turned their was "squirted" through fine holes in diamond dies. attention to the German market, to such good effect After pre-heating in an inert gas to remove the organ- that the Düsseldorf Gewerbeausstellung (Industrial ic binder, followed by heating to a very high tem- Exhibition) in 1902was lit entirely by Philips lamps. perature (the preparation process), filament wire The bitter competitive struggle fought with other with a bright metallic surface was obtained. The fil- manufacturers led in 1903 to the setting-up in Berlin aments were put on special mounts and sealed in of the "Verkaufsstelle Vereinigte Glühlampen- glass bulbs. The lamp so produced, which came out in about 1906, was called the "squirted"-tungsten- *) Formerly with Philips, now in retirement. filament lamp. 1) See N. A. Halbertsma, The birth of a lamp factory in 1891, Philips tech. Rev. 23, 222-236, 1961/62. This lamp was a very considerable improvement 1963/64, No. 1 HALF -WATT LAMP 3 Photo Science Museum, London Fig. 1. Six metal-filament lamps from the years 1897 to about 1937. on the carbon-filament lamp, which therefore grad- shocks and transportation proved to be a drawback. ually disappeared from the market, although it Every possible endeavour was therefore made to continued to be used for years in places where the find a method of making stronger tungsten filaments, lamps were subject to severe vibrations. The reduc- viz, by drawing. tion of the power consumed, from 3.5 W per candle The first to succeed was the American Coolidge in the carbon-filament lamp to about 1 W in the in 1908. In his process the tungsten powder was tungsten lamp, quickly proved decisive both as pressed into thin bars, which were pre-heated to regards the potential uses of the electric lamp and make them conductive and to give sufficient co- the spread of power stations. The method of manu- herence for handling, subsequently further heated facturing the new lamps, however, more resembled in an inert gas to just below their melting point, and laboratory work than factory production, and the then machine-hammered white-hot (swaged) into fact that they were not well able to withstand thin rods (fig. 2). These operations made thematerial Fig. 2. Ductile tungsten wire is made by machine-hammering (swaging) sintered tungsten bars to increase their density after which they are drawn to the required thickness through hard-metal or diamond dies. The photograph shows a swaging machine, with the tungsten bar being introduced manually after having first been raised to a very high tempera turc in the adjoining furnace; after some passes through this machine, the bar is passed through an automatic swaging machine. 4 PHILIPS TECHNICAL REVIEW VOLUME 25 Volume XXXIV. June, 1912. No.6 THE PHYSICAL REVIEW. CONVECTION AND CONDUCTION OF HEAT IN GASES. By IRV!NG LANGI\.1UIR. PART I. HISTORICAL. HE loss of heat by convection from a heated body has apparently T always been looked upon as a phenomenon essentially so com- plicated that a true knowledge qf its laws seemed nearly impossible. A. Oberbeck' gives the general differentlal equations for this problem but finds it impossible to solve them for actual cases. L. Lorenz? for the ease of vertically placed plane surfaces is able to obtain some approxirnate Fig. 3. Irving Langmuir (left), in conversation with Sir . .T. J. Thomso n, the discoverer of the electron. (The photo, taken in 1923, is by courtesy of General Electric Research Lnboratories Schenectady.) Right, the opening lines of the first of Langmuir's publications that lcd to the develop- ment of the gas-filled lamp. so ductile that at high temperature it could be drawn search which fundamentally widened its potentiali- into wire of any required thickness, down to the very ties, may still be regarded as a classical example of finest. applied physics. The fact that this ycar marks the The Philips factories, too, very soon adopted this 50th anniversary of the gas-filled lamp has prompted process, and their first drawn-tungsten-filament us to review this interesting work once again. We lamp was made on 5th Deccmber 1911. Owing to shall first consider the invention itself, and then this great effort the new lamp was brought out by trace the subsequent development. Philips almost simultaneously with those of compe- Langmuic's invention ti tors. In July 1912 the production of squirted-fda- ment lamps was stopped altogether, and from then A critical study of experiments carried out by on only lamps with drawn filaments werc put on the Nernst conccrning the formation of nitric oxide on market. an incandescent wirc in air 2), induced Langmuir to The new technique using drawn tungstcn wire investigate the loss of heat by convection from a had hardly been introduced in the factory when a wire heatcd to incandescence in a gas. new discovery was announced ~ the incandescent The attraction of burning the filament in an inert lamp with a gas-filled bulb. That was at the begin- gas (i.e. one which would not react with the white- ning of 1913, now half a century ago. As the new hot tungsten) instead of in a vacuum as done pre- lamp consumed about half a watt per candle, it viously, was that the surrounding gas considerably soon became fairly generally known as the "half- slows down the evaporation of the tungsten which watt lamp". The credit for the invention of this is responsible for the blackening of the bulb. This lamp was due to the distinguished physicist hving made it possible, while maintaining the same useful Langmuir, who was working in the laboratories life, to heat the filament to a vcry much higher of the General Electric Company in Schenectady temperature, the higher the filament temperature (D. S. A.); seefig. 3. the better being the conversion of the electrical At first the invention related only to large lamps, energy into light.
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