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| Sign of the times |
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| vk6zgo:
--- Quote from: dunkemhigh on May 13, 2021, 09:38:11 pm ---As my attention started to drift on the final leg of a 195 mile round trip the other night, I realised that the orange glow on the horizon, from whatever city/town is out there, has gone - now it's a white glow. But being white and like moonlight, it's much less obvious. In fact, I think I only really noticed because of the lack of orange glow and knowing what that would have looked like. It won't be long before only olde fuddy-duddies will remember seeing that glow. --- End quote --- Back in the day, in Oz, the glow was always white from colour corrected mercury vapour lamps, & some incandescents, then those godawful sodium crap things took over. They were still very rare in Western Australia when I went to the UK in 1971, but all over the place there. The rule for cars driving in town had just changed to "dipped beams", but very few Brit drivers did that, driving around on their parking lights, instead, as they had for decades. If a car had no yellow in its paint colour, it was pretty much invisible. The same was the case for people's clothes, from the driver's point of view. I nearly got knocked over by a dark blue "invisible taxi" on one occasion, on a zebra crossing! On my return home, I noticed that the scourge of sodium had started to take over, there, too! On another trip to the UK, in 1974" I parked my pink Ford Cortina hire car in a smallish car park, & went to visit some people. On my return, after dark, I couldn't find a pink Cortina, but there was a yellow one! Not really that much of a hassle, as the key ring had the Reg number on it, but it had me going for a while. |
| David Hess:
--- Quote from: dunkemhigh on May 13, 2021, 09:38:11 pm ---As my attention started to drift on the final leg of a 195 mile round trip the other night, I realised that the orange glow on the horizon, from whatever city/town is out there, has gone - now it's a white glow. But being white and like moonlight, it's much less obvious. In fact, I think I only really noticed because of the lack of orange glow and knowing what that would have looked like. It won't be long before only olde fuddy-duddies will remember seeing that glow. --- End quote --- What does that make those of us who remember the bug-light yellow glow from low pressure sodium lamps? |
| PlainName:
boring olde phartes? |
| james_s:
--- Quote from: floobydust on May 14, 2021, 02:42:07 am ---olde fuddy-duddies remember mercury blue streetlighting, and fuddy-duddies remember sodium halide. Detroit massive $185M LED streetlight project 25,320 cobra heads replaced as crapola Leotek which did not last "premature burning out". $3.9M worth of LED units, $5.2M installation and then a lawsuit over it all. I'll bet sodium would've been much cheaper lol. LED streetlighting has an anemic dim glow, dark splotches on the road, fake specs leaving civil engineers thinking they can light up more with less. --- End quote --- Good quality LED streetlighting produces nice quality light with good optical control and long life. The problem is not LED streetlighting, the problem is CHEAP crappy luminaires that don't meet specs and don't live up to quoted lifespans. Leotek is cheap crap, this is like buying the cheapest LED bulb you can find at the dollar store and complaining that LED bulbs are no good based on it. If you buy a good quality product you stand a good chance of getting good results. If you buy the cheapest thing you can find, well, sometimes you get what you pay for. LED is the future of lighting though, development has virtually ceased on all other lighting technologies. A friend of mine who works in the industry went to a lighting industry trade show about 10 years ago and said that absolutely everything on the floor was LED, it was like nothing else existed. Previously there was fluorescent, electrodeless induction, and various HID technologies but all of that was gone. It isn't too surprising though, LED can provide longer life with less maintenance, better lumen maintenance, less color shift, better uniformity between luminaires, shorter (as in none) warmup time to full brightness, instant restrike after a power failure, more color options, better optical control and many other advantages. That doesn't mean there isn't garbage on the market, but superior products do exist. |
| langwadt:
http://drbulb.com/leds-in-hollywood |
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