Role of light-source technology in environmental preservation

摘要

The history of light-source technology has been a succession of improvements in pursuit of higher efficiency, higher color rendering index and longer lamp life. When Thomas Edison demonstrated the first incandescent lamp in 1879, the efficiencywas about 1 lm/W and the lifetime about 100 hours. Development of new light sources and other technical advances since then have brought efficiency above 100 lm/W and lamp life to over 12,000 hours. Recently environmental concerns have focused lightingrelated R&D on eliminating toxic heavy metals such as lead and mercury from light sources. and on establishing technologies for recycling fluorescent lamps.