Electric light became a part of our lives around 1880 as Thomas Edison began illuminating parts of New York City. For more than 100 years, the basic operating principle of light bulbs remained the same. For the most part, we used the incandescent bulbs that Edison pioneered. Of course, there were fluorescent bulbs as well, but most of our lamps used the familiar incandescent in various configurations.
In the 1990s, compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) came on the scene. They were expensive, slow to come on, and didn’t dim properly, but they used much less electricity and gradually started to take over. More recently, LED bulbs have overtaken them. They don’t have the shortcomings of CFLs and use even less energy. Initially they were exceedingly expensive but they are getting cheaper all the time and already make good economic sense.
After a century of nearly unchanging technology, the world of lighting has become a place of rapid change. LED lights are not likely to dominate the world for all that long because there are many up-and-coming lamp technologies being developed.
There are induction lamps, organic LED lamps, and recently, lights that utilize graphene, the almost miraculous form of carbon that is poised to revolutionize multiple industries.
A graphene-coated LED light bulb that lasts longer and uses less energy than standard LED bulbs is expected to hit the market this year. A group at Seoul National University in South Korea is working on a lighting technology that uses a sheet of graphene only one-atom thick. It could lead to flexible and transparent displays.
Ten years from now, it is hard to say just what kind of light bulbs we will be using.
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World’s ‘Thinnest’ Light Bulb, Made From Graphene, Debuts
Photo, posted March 8, 2009, courtesy of James Bowe via Flickr.
Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.