Carbon Lamp Standards.

Progress, Volume II, Issue 6, 1 April 1907, Page 209

Carbon Lamp Standards.

The long expected specification for Carbon Filament Glow Lamps was issued last January by the Engineers' Standards Committee, which regarded it as of exceptional importance. Certainly no single piece of electric apparatus stands in greater need of standardisation. The quality of some carbon lamps is, beyond question, very erratic There is no independent check on it, and the makers' guarantees, — well, they are makers' guaiantees. "It is well known" says an expeit writei,

" that 220 volt lamps of 16 c.p reputed 60-watt lamps, take anything from 70 watts upwards during; their brief lives, and they -^ ary -widely in candle power " Under these circumsetnces it requires no stietch of the imagination to conceive of consumers paying for 16 candle power and getting only eight Neither does it requne any preternatural acumen to conclude that when they suspect they complain rather bitteily. Theie is the testing of lamps of course, but it is nevei quite satisfactory. Next pel haps to caloiinc values there is no measurement in common use in the electric industry which is so difficult to conduct with accuracy as that of the candle power and efficiency of lamps. The new standaid having been adopted by the makers there -will, it is expected in Britain, "be a marked improvement in electric lamps.