6-S I E S LIGHTING HANDBOOK

Hydrogen has high heat-conductivity and is therefore inefficient for

lamps for most purposes. However, this characteristic is useful in lamps
used for signaling purposes where quick flashing (cooling) is desired. (See
Fig. 6-8.)
POWER
ON
100
TIME IN SECONDS
FIG. 6-8. Incandescence and nigrescence characteris-
tics of "quick flashing" and general service lamps.
Table
6-2 shows thermal and luminous characteristics of several vacuum
and- gas-filled lamps. The filament dissipates its energy by radiation be-
yond the bulb, by conduction and convection of the surrounding gas, by
conduction of the leads and supports, and by bulb absorption. By refer-
ence to the "Gas Loss" column of the table it will be noted that the per-
centage of gas loss increases rapidly as the wattage is decreased, the value
for the 40-watt lamp being 20 per cent as compared with 6 per cent for the
1,000-watt lamp.
In manufacturing lamps, gas usually is introduced at about 70 to 80
per cent of atmospheric pressure. Operated under normal conditions
the pressure rises to about atmospheric pressure. A lamp operated at
more than normal temperatures may develop higher than atmospheric
pressure within the bulb. When a hard glass bulb is used or when a bulb
may be cooled by artificial ventilation, such as in projector housings, the
filament temperature (and thereby the efficiency) may be increased.
When this is done, it is advantageous to increase the internal gas pressure
in order to minimize the vaporization of the filament. See Fig. 6-9.
Incandescent Lamp Life,j Light Output, Efficiency, and Voltage Relation-
ships
Operating data on twenty-two typical incandescent lamps are given in
Table 6-3. An incandescent lamp of any given wattage and voltage
rating may be designed to last a few hours or a few thousand hours.
Lamps are available with life ratings throughout this range. For equal
inherent quality, the shortest-life lamps of any given size and type have
the highest lumen-per-watt ratings and the longest life lamps have the
lowest lumen-per-watt ratings. For example, a photoflood lamp with
rated life of six hours produces approximately 30 lumens per watt whereas
lamps with a laboratory life of about 5,000 hours produce about 8 lumens
per watt.