PRESENTASI B.

ING

WHAT IS LIGHT BULB? (AMINUDIN)

A light bulb is a device that produces light from electricity.[1] In addition to lighting a dark
space, they can be used to show an electronic device is on, to direct traffic, for heat, and many other
purposes.
Early people used candles and oil lamps for light. Crude incandescent lights were made in
the early and middle 19th century but had little use. Improved vacuum pumps and better materials
made them shine longer and brighter late in the century. Electric power stations brought electricity to
urban and later rural areas to power them. [2] Later gas discharge lights, including fluorescent lights,
use less electricity to make more light.

History of the Light Bulb (GITA/ADI)

A Brief History of the Light Bulb
The electric light, one of the everyday conveniences that most affects our lives, was not “invented” in
the traditional sense in 1879 by Thomas Alva Edison, although he could be said to have created the
first commercially practical incandescent light. He was neither the first nor the only person trying to
invent an incandescent light bulb. In fact, some historians claim there were over 20 inventors of
incandescent lamps prior to Edison’s version. However, Edison is often credited with the invention
because his version was able to outstrip the earlier versions because of a combination of three
factors: an effective incandescent material, a higher vacuum than others were able to achieve and a
high resistance that made power distribution from a centralized source economically viable.

Early Light Bulbs

In 1802, Humphry Davy invented the first electric light. He experimented with electricity and invented
an electric battery. When he connected wires to his battery and a piece of carbon, the carbon
glowed, producing light. His invention was known as the Electric Arc lamp. And while it produced
light, it didn’t produce it for long and was much too bright for practical use.

Over the next seven decades, other inventors also created “light bulbs” but no designs emerged for
commerical application. More notably, in 1840, British scientist Warren de la Rue enclosed a coiled
platinum filament in a vacuum tube and passed an electric current through it. The design was based
on the concept that the high melting point of platinum would allow it to operate at high temperatures
and that the evacuated chamber would contain fewer gas molecules to react with the platinum,
improving its longevity. Although an efficient design, the cost of the platinum made it impractical for
commercial production.

In 1850 an English physicist named Joseph Wilson Swan created a “light bulb” by enclosing
carbonized paper filaments in an evacuated glass bulb. And by 1860 he had a working prototype,
but the lack of a good vacuum and an adequate supply of electricity resulted in a bulb whose lifetime
was much too short to be considered an effective prodcer of light. However, in the 1870’s better
vacuum pumps became available and Swan continued experiments on light bulbs. In 1878, Swan
developed a longer lasting light bulb using a treated cotton thread that also removed the problem of
early bulb blackening.
On July 24, 1874 a Canadian patent was filed by a Toronto medical electrician named Henry
Woodward and a colleague Mathew Evans. They built their lamps with different sizes and shapes
of carbon rods held between electrodes in glass cylinders filled withnitrogen. Woodward and Evans
attempted to commercialize their lamp, but were unsuccessful. They eventually sold their patent to
Edison in 1879.

Thomas Edison and the “first” light bulb

In 1878, Thomas Edison began serious research into developing a practical incandescent lamp and
on October 14, 1878, Edison filed his first patent application for "Improvement In Electric Lights".
However, he continued to test several types of material for metal filaments to improve upon his
original design and by Nov 4, 1879, he filed another U.S. patent for an electric lamp using "a carbon
filament or strip coiled and connected ... to platina contact wires."

Although the patent described several ways of creating the carbon filament including using "cotton
and linen thread, wood splints, papers coiled in various ways," it was not until several months after
the patent was granted that Edison and his team discovered that a carbonized bamboo filament
could last over 1200 hours.

This discovery marked the beginning of commerically manufactured light bulbs and in 1880, Thomas
Edison’s company, Edison Electric Light Company begain marketing its new product.
Construction and Working Principle of the light bulb (ADI)

The light bulb has a tungsten filament as the light emitting media and is specially manufactured by precision
machines to give the correct cross sectional area. The tungsten filament is coiled to give a very high resistance and is
encased in a glass envelope. This glass envelope or bulb is filled with a low pressure inert gas such as nitrogen or
argon. When electricity passes through the coiled tungsten filament, it becomes hot and glows. The inert gas
conducts the heat generated by the filament to the glass bulb from where the heat is radiated into the atmosphere.

Instead of filling the tubes with inert gas, earlier bulbs used a vacuum to increase the life of the filament.

The drawback of that arrangement was that the heat generated by the glowing filament
would heat up the contact wires, often damaging the insulation and prematurely ending the life of the
bulb.

Types of Light Bulbs (FAJAR)

The incandescent light bulb turns electricity into light by sending the electric current through a
thin wire called a filament. Filaments are made up mostly of tungsten, a metal.
The resistance of the filament heats the bulb up. Eventually the filament gets so hot that it
glows, producing light.
A fluorescent bulb is a glass tube usually filled with argon gas and a little bit of mercury. When
turned on, the cathode heats up and sends out electrons. These hit the argon gas and the
mercury. The argon gas makes a plasma which lets the electrons move around better.
Fluorescent lamps are efficient, and only give off ¼ the amount of heat of an incandescent
An LED is made like electronics. It's a chip of semiconducting material. LED bulbs are more
efficient and last much longer than either incandescent or fluorescent bulbs. Unlike fluorescent
bulbs, LEDs do not use mercury, which is toxic. For several years LED bulbs were not as bright as
the other kinds of lights, and cost more too.
Comparison of Incandescent lights with tube lights, CFL, and LED Lights
Incandescent light bulbs are less efficient as compared with CFL, LED, and tube lights as a part
of the energy is wasted into heat.
An incandescent light bulb adds to the heat load of an air conditioning system unlike the other
options.
Incandescent light bulbs can be used with a dimmer circuit thus allowing to control the
intensity of the light during romantic candle light dinners. In case of CFL and tube lights we can
switch off some of them to get the same effect.
Incandescent light bulbs can be used for maintaining the temperature of spaces like in
mushroom farming, reptile tanks, etc.

The incandescent light bulb, however, is an old dependable technology that has been used for ages. Though new
greener options like LED and CFL lights are available, it would be some time till they are adopted worldwide as cost
is one prohibiting factor