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Sign of the times

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vk6zgo:

--- Quote from: Ed.Kloonk on May 15, 2021, 08:56:35 am ---
--- Quote from: vk6zgo on May 14, 2021, 08:36:14 am ---

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.

--- End quote ---

Might have been pink elephants that were involved?

--- End quote ---

Nah!

The friends I referred to had a fish n' chips shop, & I visited them at work.
Nothing harder than coca-cola there, the "Red Lion" up the road had been knocked down, &, on general principle, I wasn't going to the pub in the railway station car park, that looked like a re-purposed toilet block!

Besides, the pink elephants would have looked like yellow elephants.

vk6zgo:

--- Quote from: richard.cs on May 15, 2021, 10:58:53 am ---
Coming back to streetlighting. Around here (Southampton UK) it was mostly LPS, with occasional HPS on major roads until maybe 5 years ago. Now residential areas are mostly fluorescent (!?) and dim or turn off from 1 am, most of the major roads are LED with some HPS left at big junctions.

--- End quote ---

SOTON was where I had my "yellow Cortina" experience.

I'm not sure of your vintage, but you might remember the "Golden Chippy", up the road from the railway station.
That was the one my friends ran.

David Hess:

--- Quote from: james_s on May 15, 2021, 06:40:51 am ---
--- Quote from: David Hess on May 15, 2021, 06:36:39 am ---I think it varied a lot between urban, suburban, and rural areas.  LPS was common in rural California where I was born but I never saw them in any large suburban or urban areas.  The small towns in the 1970s still had a lot of them.
--- End quote ---

I think it was a California thing. I could swear I saw a few LPS remaining in San Diego I think it was as recently as about 10 years ago. Seems like I heard they were common in Arizona too, or maybe it was New Mexico, I don't even recall now. Up here in my corner I never saw them on public roads anywhere, ever. Rural and urban areas alike went from mercury vapor to HPS and over the past 10 years have been shifting to LED.
--- End quote ---

LPS may have been used in San Diego county because Palomar Observatory is near.  There were no observatories where I was.  I am sure what I saw was legacy installations which were eventually replaced with HPS and Mercury Vapor.

madires:
I can't complain. A few years ago the street lights in my little town (rural area) were changed to LED and we have more lumen consuming much less power. Also the light footprint has improved, i.e. less dark spots between light posts. No idea of vendor and model, presumably the better ones. Regarding insects, the impact of the LED street lights doesn't seem to be larger than the old ones. Might coincide with the decline in insect populations.

james_s:

--- Quote from: Zero999 on May 15, 2021, 11:36:10 am ---Is there anyone here old enough to remember gas street lights? My father is in his mid 70s and remembers seeing someone going round lighting the gas lamps every night, when he was a child.

--- End quote ---

My friend visited Germany in I think 2010 and took a few pictures of some gas streetlighting that was still in use. I don't know exactly where they were but they resembled cobrahead style luminairs but with a row of gas mantles instead of a lamp in them.

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