VAPOUR LAMP PERFECTED

Hawera Star, Volume LIII, 26 August 1933, Page 12

VAPOUR LAMP PERFECTED

DAYLIGHT AT NIGHT EXPERIMENTS ON ENGLISH ROADS. YEARS OF RESEARCH ■ REWARDED. I Daylight at night on all the roads of Britain is made possible by the success of tests with a new lamp invented by British research engineers, says the “Daily' Express,” London. It eliminates the perilous “pools of darkness” between lamp posts and enables motorists to drive without headlights and pedestrians and cyclists to move m absolute safety. Britain has 179,000 miles of road dangerous at night. To place one of the new lights every 50 yards would require 6,265,000 lamps. Fitting them to existing equipment would cost £5 a lamp. If that were done it would mean the spending of £31,325,000 in the fight against unemployment. The provision of totally’ new equipment would greatly increase the .figure and be of consequent additional benefit. Several British firms, including the General Electric Company and the British Thomson-Houston Company, have been working for years to produce the new lamp, which has no filament. Investigations have been made also by firms abroad. It is an international race to bring daylight to the roads, and the claim is that Britain is winning. One tvpe of the new lamp was installed along Watford Road, Wembley in March. It has proved so sucessful that the engineers say its development has reached a stage ’when it could be introduced to all the roads of Britain. Since the installation was made traffic on the road is three times as heavy. Vehicles have been drawn to it from thoroughfares more important though not so well lit. Another installation three-quarters of a mile long was made a month age in High Street, Croydon, and local authorities have ordered the new lamps for Kingsbury, near Edgware; Bridlington, Yorks (for the sea front); Southgate, Worksop, and Belfast. In the new lamp, lighting is provided by a cord of intensely brilliant licrht, six inches long and a quarter ol an inch wide, in a glass tube contained in another glass tube. Gases in the tube are agitated by a current passing through it. The agi tated gas glows, and that glow is an even light almost like daylight. Dr. Clifford C. Paterson and his young men and women research assistants in the General Electric Company’s laboratories at Wembley made then first experiments with lamps using sodium vapour. The light was good but colours could not be distinguishec in it. With the new lamp colours car. be much more easily defined, thougf at present reds appear a little brownish. Twice as much light is given by the new lamp as by tungsten lamps for the same cost.