• Embed Doc
  • Copy Link
  • Readcast
  • Collections
  • CommentGo Back
 
Scanning Our Past from London
The Filament Lamp and New Materials
Earlier we looked at the linear motor—an idea which wasquite impractical in the 19th century, but became possiblein the 20th. Another 19th century electrical artifact that hasbeen completely transformed and given a new lease of life isthe filament lamp (Fig. 1). In the 19th century, the filamentwas made of carbon: no other material was satisfactory.I. E
ARLY
C
ARBON
L
AMPS
At the time, the carbon filament lamp must have seemedideal:it producedlight forthehomeatareasonablepriceandit provided most of the load for the new electricity supply in-dustry. Indeed, without the filament lamp, there would havebeen no supply industry. Electric lighting out of doors wasusually by means of arc lamps that were more efficient atconvertingelectricalenergyintolightthanthefilamentlamp,but could not be made in small units so the two were not incompetition. The development of the gas mantle at the endof the century, however, was a serious challenge to the fila-mentlampanditsarrivalencouragedfresheffortstoimproveelectric lighting.From the earliest days, it was appreciated that the effi-ciency depended on the temperature of the filament. Thehotter the filament, the more efficient the lamp. With carbon,the practical limit is about 1600C. Above that, the lifebecomes unacceptably short because material is evaporatedfromthe filament. Another disadvantageof running the lamptoo hot is that material which evaporates from the filament isdeposited on the glass, blackening it and reducing the lightoutput even though the lamp continues to function.An improved carbon filament lamp, the General Electricmetallized(GEM) lamp,was developedbytheGeneralElec-tric Company in America in 1904. It was the work of WillisR. Whitney (1868–1958) (Fig. 2) who, with one assistant,ran a new research laboratory for the company. He made anelectric resistance furnace in which he could heat carbon fil-aments to about 3500 C in an atmosphere of carbon vapor.He found that the process changed the nature of the carbonfilament. It developed a very hard outer coating and couldbe run 200 C hotter than ordinary carbon lamps, giving ahigher efficiency with no reduction in life.
Publisher Item Identifier S 0018-9219(01)02074-6.
Fig.1.
Typicalearly1880sfilamentlightbulb.(CourtesyoftheIEEArchives, London, U.K.)
A number of other workers tried to improve the carbon fil-ament.Sometookpowderedgraphite,mixeditwithabinder,and squirted the mixture through a nozzle to form a finefilament from which the binder was subsequently removedby heating. Other approaches included coating an ordinarycarbon filament with oxides, nitrides, or silicides to form ahard surface.II. T
ESTING
T
HEIR
M
ETAL
The future, however, lay with metal filaments. Early ex-perimenters had tried platinum, but that was far too rare andexpensive for general use. Practical metal filament lampswere developed first by some of the European lamp manu-facturers. Several metals with very high melting points weretried, including vanadium (melting point 1680C) and nio-bium (1950 C).
0018–9219/01$10.00 © 2001 IEEE
PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE, VOL. 89, NO. 3, MARCH 2001 413
 
Fig. 2.
Willis R. Whitney. (Courtesy IEEE History Center.)
Strictly speaking, the vapor pressure of the metals whenneartotheirmeltingpointisasimportantasthemeltingpointitself since if the metal had a low vapor pressure, then mate-rialwouldevaporatefromthefilament,reducingitsthicknesseven though the filament did not actually melt.Metals generally have a much lower electrical resistancethan carbon and so metal filaments have to be much longerand thinner than carbon ones. Furthermore, the refractorymetals are rather brittle and difficult to draw into fine wiresby conventional wire-drawing techniques. The solutionadopted initially was to use the metal in powder form, mixit with a binder, squirt the mixture through a fine die, andthen heat the resulting thread to drive off the binder materialand sinter the metal particles together. Osmium lamps weremade in that way from 1902 and used for a few years mainlyin Europe. They were extremely fragile and quite expensiveto make because the very long filament (typically 700 mm)had to be wound on an elaborate support arrangement.The first metal to be used with a measure of commercialsuccess was osmium, a rare and difficult-to-work metal witha melting point of about 3000C. Its main modern use isin the tips of fountain pens. Osmium filament lamps werefirst made by Carl Auer von Welsbach, an Austrian alreadyestablished in the lighting industry as the pioneer of the gasmantle. Some lamps were made using an alloy of osmiumand tungsten and sold under the name Osram, from
os
miumand wolf 
ram
, the latter being the German name for tungsten.The lamps were not a success, but the name was kept.III. T
ANTALUN AND
T
UNGSTEN
Tantalum melts at 2996 C and has the advantage that itcan be drawn readily into a fine wire. In 1905, Siemens and
Fig. 3.
Early British Thompson–Houston tungsten filament bulb.(Courtesy of the IEE Archives, London, U.K.)
Fig. 4.
William Coolidge. (Courtesy IEEE History Center.)
Halske in Germany began making tantalum filament lampsand the following year they entered into a patent poolingagreement with the American General Electric Company.Tantalum filaments were stronger than osmium ones andwere widely used for a few years, but a disadvantage soonappeared. When used on alternating current circuits thetantalum metal recrystallized and the filaments quicklybecame brittle.Tungsten is an obvious choice for the filament (Fig. 3)because it has a higher melting point than any other metal,3410 C. It is extracted from the minerals scheelite, which iscalcium tungstate, or wolframite, which is iron manganesetungstate. The ore is treated chemically to produce tung-sten trioxide, and metallic tungsten is obtained by reducingthe oxide with hydrogen. Tungsten filament lamps were firstproduced in Vienna by Alexander Just and Franz Hanamanusing a sintering process similar to that used for osmium
414 PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE, VOL. 89, NO. 3, MARCH 2001
of 00

Leave a Comment

You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...
You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...