Energy & Power - Overview
The Museum's collections on energy and power illuminate the role of fire, steam, wind, water, electricity, and the atom in the nation's history. The artifacts include wood-burning stoves, water turbines, and windmills, as well as steam, gas, and diesel engines. Oil-exploration and coal-mining equipment form part of these collections, along with a computer that controlled a power plant and even bubble chambers—a tool of physicists to study protons, electrons, and other charged particles.
A special strength of the collections lies in objects related to the history of electrical power, including generators, batteries, cables, transformers, and early photovoltaic cells. A group of Thomas Edison's earliest light bulbs are a precious treasure. Hundreds of other objects represent the innumerable uses of electricity, from streetlights and railway signals to microwave ovens and satellite equipment.
"Energy & Power - Overview" showing 506 items.
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Photometric Test Lamp
- Description (Brief)
- Osram tungsten lamp designed to emit a specific amount of light. For use in testing at the National Bureau of Standards.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1965
- maker
- Osram
- ID Number
- 1992.0342.24
- accession number
- 1992.0342
- catalog number
- 1992.0342.24
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Photometric Test Lamp
- Description (Brief)
- Osram tungsten lamp designed to emit a specific amount of light. For use in testing at the National Bureau of Standards.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1965
- maker
- Osram
- ID Number
- 1992.0342.25
- accession number
- 1992.0342
- catalog number
- 1992.0342.25
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Incandescent Test Lamp
- Description (Brief)
- GE tungsten lamp designed to emit a specific amount of light. For use in testing at the National Bureau of Standards.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1930
- maker
- General Electric Co.
- ID Number
- 1992.0342.26
- accession number
- 1992.0342
- catalog number
- 1992.0342.26
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Incandescent Test Lamp
- Description (Brief)
- GE tungsten lamp designed to emit a specific amount of light. For use in testing at the National Bureau of Standards.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1930
- maker
- General Electric Co.
- ID Number
- 1992.0342.27
- accession number
- 1992.0342
- catalog number
- 1992.0342.27
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Coiled-coil Tungsten Lamp
- Description (Brief)
- Sylvania tungsten lamp with a coiled-coil filament.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1950
- maker
- Sylvania Electric Products Inc.
- ID Number
- 1992.0342.31
- accession number
- 1992.0342
- catalog number
- 1992.0342.31
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Electronic Halarc Lamp
- Description (Brief)
- GE metal halide lamp for indoor use, production unit. Failed competitor to compact fluorescent lamp.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1981
- maker
- General Electric Company
- ID Number
- 1992.0428.01
- catalog number
- 1992.0428.01
- accession number
- 1992.0428
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Experimental Compact Fluorescent Lamp
- Description
- Ordinary lamps give good quality light and can be designed for all manner of special tasks. However, they waste a tremendous amount of energy in the form of heat. The steep rise in energy prices during the 1970s spurred a burst of invention aimed at developing lamps that gave more lumens per watt—the lighting equivalent of miles per gallon in cars.
- Much of the invention took place in the laboratories of major lighting companies like General Electric and Sylvania. But inventors outside the corporate labs also offered ideas and new devices. One such inventor was Donald Hollister of California. A UCLA graduate with experience in plasma physics, Hollister patented a small fluorescent lamp called the "Litek." The lamp seen here is a hand-made prototype from 1979.
- Most fluorescent lamps, large and small, operate by passing an electric current through a gas between two electrodes. The current energizes the gas that in turn radiates ultraviolet (UV) light. The UV is converted to visible light by a coating of phosphors inside the glass envelope of the lamp. Electrodes are responsible for much of the energy lost in a fluorescent lamp and are usually the part of the lamp that fails. Hollister's design was "electrodeless," and used high-frequency radio waves instead of electrodes to energize the gas.
- The Litek lamp worked in the laboratory, and Hollister received funding from the U.S. Department of Energy to refine the design. That proved more difficult than expected though. The electronic components available at the time were expensive and generated too much heat. Hollister tried to compensate with the massive heat-dissipation fins set below the bulb, but this added to the cost. Also, as an independent inventor Hollister could not just focus on research. He had to perform administrative tasks that researchers in corporate labs did not, and the project lagged. In the end the Litek did not reach the market, though in the 1990s the major companies all began selling electrodeless fluorescent lamps. These built on the work of several inventors, including Hollister's.
- Lamp characteristics: Nickle-plated brass medium-screw base shell with brass retainer and plastic skirt. The base insulator is part of skirt. A metal fitting attaches to the skirt to dissipate heat. Tipped, G-shaped envelope with phosphor coating on inner wall and clear tip.
- Date made
- 1979
- maker
- Hollister, Donald
- ID Number
- 1992.0466.01
- catalog number
- 1992.0466.01
- accession number
- 1992.0466
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Tungsten Lamp with Reflective Coating
- Description (Brief)
- GE tungsten lamp tested by the Department of Energy. An infrared-reflecting coat raised the filament temperature.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1985
- maker
- General Electric Company
- ID Number
- 1992.0466.02
- catalog number
- 1992.0466.02
- accession number
- 1992.0466
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Heat-Mirror Tungsten Lamp
- Description (Brief)
- Duro-Test tungsten lamp developed with M.I.T. An infrared-reflecting coat raised the filament temperature.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1981
- maker
- DURO-TEST Corporation
- ID Number
- 1992.0466.03
- catalog number
- 1992.0466.03
- accession number
- 1992.0466
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Experimental Sulfur Lamp
- Description
- New lighting inventions occasionally appear from unexpected directions. The development of this microwave-powered lamp provides a case in point. In 1990 Fusion Systems was a small company with a successful, highly specialized product, an innovative ultraviolet (UV) industrial lighting system powered by microwaves.
- Discharge lamps typically use electrodes to support an electric arc. Tungsten electrodes are most common, so materials that might erode tungsten can't be used in the lamp and care must be taken to not melt the electrodes. Fusion's lamp side-stepped this problem by eliminating electrodes entirely. Microwave energy from an external source energized the lamp. This opened the way for experiments with non-traditional materials, including sulfur.
- During the 1980s engineer Michael Ury, physicist Charles Wood, and their colleagues experimented several times with adapting their UV system to produce visible light without success. In 1990, they tried placing sulfur in a spherical bulb instead of a linear tube. Sulfur could give a good quality light, but did not work well in the linear tube. Other elements only gave marginal results in the spherical bulb. But when they tested sulfur in the spherical lamp they found what they hoped for: lots of good visible light with little invisible UV or infrared rays.
- They began setting up "crude" lamps like this one (one of the first ten according to Ury) in order to learn more about the new light source. In the mid-1990s Fusion began trying to sell their sulfur bulbs with limited success. The lamp rotated at 20,000 rpm so that the temperature stayed even over the surface, and a fan was needed for cooling. The fan and spin motor made noise and reduced energy efficiency of the total system. Then they found that the bulbs lasted longer than the magnetrons used to generate the microwaves that powered them. Finding inexpensive magnetrons proved too difficult, and the company stopped selling the product in 2002.
- Lamp characteristics: A quartz stem with notch near the bottom serves as the base. The notch locks the lamp into its fixture. The sphere has an argon gas filling, and the yellow material is sulfur condensed on the inner lamp wall. The pattern of condensation indicates lamp was burned base-down. Tipless, G-shaped quartz envelope.
- Date made
- ca 1990
- date made
- ca. 1990
- maker
- Ury, Michael G.
- ID Number
- 1992.0467.01
- catalog number
- 1992.0467.01
- accession number
- 1992.0467
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center