At the end of the 19th century, man was awakened with a fabulous new lighting for all to enjoy. The incandescent light bulb was born. Thanks to the inventiveness and perseverance of one of the most famous inventors of our times, Thomas A. Edison, we are able to still enjoy its benefits, but can we still enjoy its luxuries ?
Today, with the cost of electricity rising at a pretty steady pace and the now comparatively low efficiency of the incandescent light, it no longer remains the most desired all around lighting source for general use. The widely used fluorescent type design has a much greater efficiency and thus a much lower cost per wattage use. Most recently, there has been a "new kid on the block" that shows even greater promise to lower our energy cost which is now competing with the CFL lamps, which are the most efficient of the fluorescent type and a direct replacement for the incandescent standard lamp socket. The CFL has in the past been plagued with its problems in the '80s, having inherent "flickering" problems and thus customer dissatisfaction, along with its lingering high cost, but this is changing rapidly with their increase in use.
The LED, between 3 and 10mm in diameter and virtually indestructible plastic, made its tentative debut in the late '60s, but did not receive much attention then, simply because of their inefficiency at that time and extremely prohibitive cost. The price of LEDs have dropped drastically since then. In 1982 when the blue Led was announced by Panasonic, the price for just one unit was approximately $50. . The reason is simply because of the available quantity and also that these units came from R&D. The brightness of this LED was very low, i.e., in the milli-candellas(thousanths of a candela). The brightness not too long ago was measured in candles in virtually all colors. Even the U.S. energy department is funding some programs to increase the efficiency level of Leds which have now begun to surpass even the latest CFL fluorescent. Auto manufacturers have been using blue and white Leds for a few years for much of their interior lighting and talk is that some of the 2008 autos will be using super white Led clusters for their headlamps.
Both industry and consumer use of Leds has seen a tremendous increase in their use in recent months and one of the main reasons for this is that they have seen the brightness increasing at a tremendous rate lately with all the R&D being carried out throughout the world. Along with this is the much higher production levels because of their ever greater demand, thus bringing down their costs. Some buildings exteriors are being lit by them along with some bridges and for the past several years, our traffic lighting system along with many other countries of the world have been retrofitting their incandescent lamps with the latest Leds. One simple reason...they use less than 1/8 the power, just in time to help reduce what we are told is "Global Warming". We must also consider some facts, i.e., that both the incandescent and fluorescent lamps have been around for a long time, but have not increased their lumens/watt efficiency by any great degree since their invention, but LED technology has increased its efficiency by a factor of many dozens. The Led lamp will also last many times longer than the incandescent, about 100 times, or 100,000 hours and the fragility of the Led is so low that they have been tested above 1,000 impact G's, without failing. What will their future bring ? Only time will tell.
