Comeback for Tungsten lighting?

[Keith Walters]

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/01/how-get-old-fashioned-light-bulb-glow-without-wasting-so-much-energy

 

This idea has been around for a while, but this is the first time I've heard of anybody actually making it work. The basic principle is to use an IR-reflecting mirror around the lamp filament to "recycle" the invisible infrared and use it to further heat the filament, producing more visible light.

Currently incandescents turn just 2% of their power input to visible light; they reckon they could get it up to about 40% which is considerably better than either fluorescent or LED lighting.

Their prototype is about 6%, roughly on par with cheaper LED and fluorescents.

 

Interesting times....

[Mark Kenfield]

Very exciting tech! Here's hoping we can see it reach higher efficiency levels and weasel its way downstream to motion picture lighting bulbs.

 

Imagine a 2k fresnel offering the output of a 10k or even a 20k? And with nothing more than a bulb change required! Very very cool.

[Christopher Santucci]

I'm all for it and all for the 100 CRI that tungsten affords.