Commercialization of fluorescent lamps[edit]

All the major features of fluorescent lighting were in place at the end of the 1920s. Decades of invention and development had provided the key components of fluorescent lamps: economically manufactured glass tubing, inert gases for filling the tubes, electrical ballasts, long-lasting electrodes, mercury vapor as a source of luminescence, effective means of producing a reliable electrical discharge, and fluorescent coatings that could be energized by ultraviolet light. At this point, intensive development was more important than basic research. In 1934, Arthur Compton, a renowned physicist and GE consultant, reported to the GE lamp department on successful experiments with fluorescent lighting at General Electric Co., Ltd. in Great Britain (unrelated to General Electric in the United States). Stimulated by this report, and with all of the key elements available, a team led by George E. Inman built a prototype fluorescent lamp in 1934 at General Electrics Nela Park (Ohio) engineering laboratory. This was not a trivial exercise; as noted by Arthur A. Bright, "A great deal of experimentation had to be done on lamp sizes and shapes, cathode construction, gas pressures of both argon and mercury vapor, colors of fluorescent powders, methods of attaching them to the inside of the tube, and other details of the lamp and its auxiliaries before the new device was [8] ready for the public." In addition to having engineers and technicians along with facilities for R&D work on fluorescent lamps, General Electric controlled what it regarded as the key patents covering fluorescent lighting, including the patents originally issued to Hewitt, Moore, and Kch. More important than these was a patent covering an electrode that did not disintegrate at the gas pressures that ultimately were employed in fluorescent lamps. Albert W. Hull of GEs Schenectady Research Laboratory filed for a patent on this invention in [12] 1927, which was issued in 1931. General Electric used its control of the patents to prevent competition with its incandescent lights and probably delayed the introduction of fluorescent lighting by 20 years. Eventually, war production required 24 hour factories with economical lighting and fluorescent lights became available. While the Hull patent gave GE a basis for claiming legal rights over the fluorescent lamp, a few months after the lamp went into production the firm learned of a U.S. patent application that had been filed in 1927 for the aforementioned "metal vapor lamp" invented in Germany by Meyer, Spanner, and Germer. The patent application indicated that the lamp had been created as a superior means of producing ultraviolet light, but the application also contained a few statements referring to fluorescent illumination. Efforts to obtain a U.S. patent had met with numerous delays, but were it to be granted, the patent might have caused serious difficulties for GE. At first, GE sought to block the issuance of a patent by claiming that priority should go to one of their employees, Leroy J. Buttolph, who according to their claim had invented a fluorescent lamp in 1919 and whose patent application was still pending. GE also had filed a patent application in 1936 in Inmans name to cover the improvements wrought by his group. In 1939 GE decided that the claim of Meyer, Spanner, and Germer had some merit, and that in any event a long interference procedure was not in their best interest. They therefore dropped the Buttolph claim and paid $180,000 to acquire the Meyer, et al. application, which at that point was owned by a firm known as [13] Electrons, Inc. The patent was duly awarded in December 1939. This patent, along with the Hull patent, put GE on what seemed to be firm legal ground, although it faced years of legal challenges fromSylvania Electric Products, Inc., which claimed infringement on patents that it held.

Even though the patent issue would not be completely resolved for many years, General Electrics strength in manufacturing and marketing the bulb gave it a pre-eminent position in the emerging fluorescent light market. Sales of "fluorescent lumiline lamps" commenced in 1938 when four different sizes of tubes were put on the market used in fixtures manufactured by three leading corporations, Lightolier, Artcraft Fluorescent Lighting Corporation, and Globe Lighting, two based in New York City. During the following year GE and Westinghouse publicized the new lights through exhibitions at the New York Worlds Fair and the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco. Fluorescent lighting systems spread rapidly during World War II as wartime manufacturing intensified lighting demand. By 1951 more light was produced in the United States by fluorescent lamps than by incandescent [14] lamps. In the first years zinc orthosilicate with varying content of beryllium was used as greenish phosphor. Small additions of magnesium tungstate improved the blue part of the spectrum yielding acceptable white. After [15] it was discovered that beryllium was toxic, halophosphate based phosphors took over.

Principles of operation[edit]
The fundamental means for conversion of electrical energy into radiant energy in a fluorescent lamp relies on inelastic scattering of electrons. An incident electron collides with an atom in the gas. If the free electron has enough kinetic energy, it transfers energy to the atom's outer electron, causing that electron to temporarily jump up to a higher energy level. The collision is 'inelastic' because a loss of kinetic energy occurs. This higher energy state is unstable, and the atom will emit an ultraviolet photon as the atom's electron reverts to a lower, more stable, energy level. Most of the photons that are released from the mercury atoms have wavelengths in the ultraviolet (UV) region of the spectrum, predominantly at wavelengths of 253.7 and 185 nanometers (nm). These are not visible to the human eye, so they must be converted into visible light. This is done by making use of fluorescence. Ultraviolet photons are absorbed by electrons in the atoms of the lamp's interior fluorescent coating, causing a similar energy jump, then drop, with emission of a further photon. The photon that is emitted from this second interaction has a lower energy than the one that caused it. The chemicals that make up the phosphor are chosen so that these emitted photons are at wavelengths visible to the human eye. The difference in energy between the absorbed ultra-violet photon and the emitted visible light photon goes toward heating up the phosphor coating. When the light is turned on, the electric power heats up the cathode enough for it to emit electrons (thermionic emission). These electrons collide with and ionize noble gas atoms inside the bulb surrounding the filament to form a plasma by the process of impact ionization. As a result of avalanche ionization, the conductivity of the ionized gas rapidly rises, allowing higher currents to flow through the lamp. The fill gas helps determine the operating electrical characteristics of the lamp, but does not give off light itself. The fill gas effectively increases the distance that electrons travel through the tube, which allows an electron a greater chance of interacting with a mercury atom. Argon atoms, excited to a metastable state by impact of an electron, can impart this energy to a neutral mercury atom and ionize it, described as the Penning effect. This has the benefit of lowering the breakdown and operating voltage of the lamp, [16] compared to other possible fill gases such as krypton.

Construction[edit]

Close-up of the cathodes of agermicidal lamp (an essentially similar design that uses no fluorescent phosphor, allowing the electrodes to be seen.)

A fluorescent lamp tube is filled with a gas containing low pressure mercury vapor and argon, xenon, neon, or krypton. The pressure inside the lamp is around 0.3% of atmospheric [17] pressure. The inner surface of the lamp is coated with a fluorescent (and often slightly phosphorescent) coating made of varying blends of metallic and rare-earth phosphor salts. The lamp's electrodes are typically made of coiled tungsten and usually referred to as cathodes because of their prime function of emitting electrons. For this, they are coated with a mixture of barium, strontium and calcium oxides chosen to have a low thermionic emissiontemperature.

The unfiltered ultraviolet glow of a germicidal lamp is produced by a low pressure mercury vapor discharge (identical to that in a fluorescent lamp) in an uncoated fused quartz envelope.

Fluorescent lamp tubes are typically straight and range in length from about 100 millimeters (3.9 in) for miniature lamps, to 2.43 meters (8.0 ft) for high-output lamps. Some lamps have the tube bent into a circle, used for table lamps or other places where a more compact light source is desired. Larger Ushaped lamps are used to provide the same amount of light in a more compact area, and are used for special architectural purposes. Compact fluorescent lamps have several small-diameter tubes joined in a bundle of two, four, or six, or a small diameter tube coiled into a spiral, to provide a high amount of light output in little volume. Light-emitting phosphors are applied as a paint-like coating to the inside of the tube. The organic solvents are allowed to evaporate, then the tube is heated to nearly the melting point of glass to drive off remaining organic compounds and fuse the coating to the lamp tube. Careful control of the grain size of the suspended phosphors is necessary; large grains, 35 micrometers or larger, lead to weak grainy coatings, whereas too many small particles 1 or 2 micrometers or smaller leads to poor light maintenance and efficiency. Most phosphors perform best with a particle size around 10 micrometers. The coating must be thick enough to capture all the ultraviolet light produced by the mercury arc, but not so thick that the phosphor coating absorbs too much visible light. The first phosphors were synthetic versions of naturally occurring fluorescent minerals, with small amounts of metals added as activators. Later other compounds [18] were discovered, allowing differing colors of lamps to be made.

Electrical aspects of operation[edit]

Different ballasts for fluorescent and discharge lamps

Fluorescent lamps are negative differential resistance devices, so as more current flows through them, the electrical resistance of the fluorescent lamp drops, allowing even more current to flow. Connected directly to a constant-voltage power supply, a fluorescent lamp would rapidly self-destruct due to the uncontrolled current flow. To prevent this, fluorescent lamps must use an auxiliary device, a ballast, to regulate the current flow through the tube. The terminal voltage across an operating lamp varies depending on the arc current, tube diameter, temperature, and fill gas. A fixed part of the voltage drop is due to the electrodes. A general lighting

service 48-inch (1,219 mm) T12 lamp operates at 430 mA, with 100 volts drop. High output lamps operate at 800 mA, and some types operate up to 1.5 A. The power level varies from 33 to 82 watts per [20] meter of tube length (10 to 25 W/ft) for T12 lamps. The simplest ballast for alternating current (AC) use is an inductor placed in series, consisting of a winding on a laminated magnetic core. Theinductance of this winding limits the flow of AC current. This type is still used, for example, in 120 volt operated desk lamps using relatively short lamps. Ballasts are rated for the size of lamp and power frequency. Where the AC voltage is insufficient to start long fluorescent lamps, the ballast is often a step-up autotransformer with substantial leakage inductance (so as to limit the current flow). Either form of inductive ballast may also include acapacitor for power factor correction.

[19]

230 V ballast for 1820 W

Many different circuits have been used to operate fluorescent lamps. The choice of circuit is based on AC voltage, tube length, initial cost, long term cost, instant versus non-instant starting, temperature ranges and parts availability, etc. Fluorescent lamps can run directly from a direct current (DC) supply of sufficient voltage to strike an arc. The ballast must be resistive, and would consume about as much power as the lamp. When operated from DC, the starting switch is often arranged to reverse the polarity of the supply to the lamp each time it is started; otherwise, the mercury accumulates at one end of the tube. Fluorescent lamps are (almost) never operated directly from DC for those reasons. Instead, an inverter converts the DC into AC and provides the current-limiting function as described below for electronic ballasts.