Yes…. yes, you read that right...
Just *look* what I rescued from the scrap pile on a job recently!
Why, it’s only a flimmin’ Philips SL-18! It’s practically the first commercially available energy saving Compact Fluorescent Lamp (CFL) that came to market way back around 1983!
As someone who was always a fan of (futuristic) lighting technology, I remember being wowed by the 5000 hour claims made on the original packaging of this thing. Five thousand hours sounds like a lifetime to a ten year old, and the industrial look was cool; a real step up from the twee faux brass, faux country-cottage, faux oil lamps with which my parents used to furnish our ‘70’s semi-detached nestled within the fumes of industrial Coventry.
I recall my dad buying one of these for the hallway and promptly taking it back to Woolies or wherever because, in his opinion, the five minute warm-up time and low-glow light output didn’t outweigh the 42W energy saving it offered over a boring bog-standard 60W filament-frying GLS bulb like Grandma used to use!
The SL-18 is interesting as it was one of the first retail products where a fluorescent tube had been bent to a shape allowing it to fit into something that would sit in your standard bayonet ceiling rose. It’s much larger than a GLS lamp at almost 17cm in length and 23cm in circumference. The weight is a whopping 550g according to my (uncalibrated-and-more-used-to-measuring-pasta) kitchen scales, all of which made it too bulky and heavy for your average desk lamps or any narrow lampshades. Much of the weight comes from the magnetic ballast fitted centrally between the loops of the tube, along with the outer glass which protects it while also providing prismatic refraction to maximise the effectiveness of the light output.
The SL-18 compared to a modern Philips CFL of the same wattage. Soon self-ballasted CFL's will disappear completely in favour of LED technology which is a shame for those who favour the 'industrial' appearance.
There’s still life in this particular old timer and instead of ending it’s days in a skip, I’m keeping it around as a conversation piece...
..you know, for parties an’ stuff.....
Update, April 2021: Over seven years on and my SL-18 is now smashed internally after I clumsily dropped it (bah!), but in the video below is a longer ramble on the thing... and on a load of other things that are semi-related. As is often the case with my video content, strong language prevails. For those who perfer the written word with their tea and biscuits, the video below is also available in article form.
AFF4