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Self-Ballasted Mercury Blended
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Updated
16-XII-2022 |
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At the time of the introduction of high pressure mercury lamps, they were considered to have two principal drawbacks compared to their incandescent predecessors. Firstly, the cool white light colour with apalling colour rendering properties, and secondly the fact that they could not be connected directly to AC mains electricity supplies and required some form of electrical ballast.
Both of these problems were alleviated with the concept of the mercury-blended lamp - which was achieved by mixing its blue-rich light with the red-rich radiation from an ordinary tungsten filament lamp. In the early 1900s it was recognised that specially designed filament lamps could be used as a resistive ballast to provide current regulation and colour correction for the arc, but it was not until 1929 that the filament and the arc were united within the same bulb to create the first blended-light lamps.
Initial experiments in this field were limited to low pressure lamps for Ultraviolet applications. In 1935 the first mercury-blended lamp for general lighting was introduced, in the form of the Medium pressure MAT lamps invented by Siemens of England. A variety of high pressure MBT blended lamps followed quickly, and the addition of fluorescent phosphors achieved continual improvements in parallel with the developments being made in mercury-fluoresscent lamps. |
| | Low Pressure |
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Philips |
110W |
| Ultrasol 5023 Self-Ballasted Sunlamp |
| 1935 |
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| | Medium Pressure |
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Siemens |
300W |
| Sieray "Dual" MAT/V first self-ballasted lamp |
| 1940 |
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Mazda |
300W |
| MAT/V of final production design |
| ~1955 |
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| | High Pressure |
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Mazda |
200W |
| MBT/V with shrink seals and pearl outer bulb |
| ~1945 |
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Philips |
250W |
| ML500 First model mercury blended |
| ~1940-45 |
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Osram |
165W |
| HWA 302 German lamp in pearl outer bulb |
| 1958 |
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Bumix |
860W |
| "Jupiter" variable colour mushroom-shape |
| ~1950 |
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Philips |
160W |
| ML Mixed Light Clear pear-shaped |
| ~1955 |
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Philips |
160W |
| ML with new design for automatic production |
| 2003 |
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Thorn |
160W |
| MBT Sunlight Clear mercury blended |
| 1987 |
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National |
100W |
| BH100 with preheated arc tube electrodes |
| 2001 |
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DuroTest |
750W |
| Self-Ballasted Lamp of high efficiency design |
| ~1960 |
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XingJi |
500W |
| HMB Halogen-Ballasted Mercury Vapour |
| 2003 |
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| | High Pressure Fluorescent |
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Philips |
160W |
| MBTL with Magnesium fluoro-germanate |
| 1960 |
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Atlas |
250W |
| MBTF with Yttrium Vanadate coated bulb |
| 1970 |
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Osram |
500W |
| HWL with isothermal bulb shape |
| 1974? |
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GE |
160W |
| E-Z Lux low voltage HSB160/PS30/M |
| ~1980 |
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DuroTest |
450W |
| Fluomeric with special high efficiency design |
| 1970/78 |
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Philips |
160W |
| MLR mercury blended reflector style |
| 1984 |
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