A Half Century of
Electric LDD1ps
•
A Visit to the famed
Westinghouse Lamp Division
•
8
COIN
MACH/HE
REVIEW
By reading the amount of light
which is registered on a photoelec-
tric cell, the operator measures
total light of a lamp inside the
sphere-shaped photometer.
If all the familiar regular-service electric lamps made in the
Westinghouse Lamp Division in one average working day could
be lighted at once and their rays conr-entrated into a nnint sn•,r~e
and placed in a suitable parabolic reflector, they would give light
enough to be seen by a man on the dark side of the moon.
This one day's production of Westinghouse Mazda lamps-
about 430,000 units-would supply a city the size of Tampa,
Florida, with lamps for an entire year, would consume 26.000.000
watts of electricity, and in so doing, produce nearly 29,000,000
candlepower of light.
Prodigious as is the daily output of these familiar tungsten fila-
ment lamps, it hardly begins to suggest the astonishing array of
lamps and electronic tubes produced by Westinghouse. After half
a century of experimentation and manufacturing, the more than
100,000,000 lamps made every year for general lighting purposes
are now the least spectacular of its products.
Westinghouse manufactures 10,000 different types of lamps and
tubes, 6,000 of which are in fairly constant demand. The remainder
are continually available for specialized needs. From the labora-
tories stream an endless procession of radically new lamps and
modifications of existing ones. Most recent among these is the
Sterilamp, used in sterilizing drinking glasses and utensils, food
preservation and meat tenderizing. Another is the penetrating
infrared drying lamp, which performs many industrial drying
operations in a fraction of the time required by older methods. A
third is the water,cooled capillary mercury lamp, which produces
light one-fifth as bright as the sun itself, yet is so tiny that it
could be hidden inside a fountain pen.
Becoming better known every day are the tubular fluorescent
lamps, nearest practical approach to the long-sought "coldlight,"
and perhaps the greatest step in lamp making since the adven t of
the drawn-tungsten filament. Among other new creations of the
lamp research scientists and engineers are the sodium and mercury-
vapor lamps used for airport, highway and industrial illumination.
But these are only a fraction of the lamps and tubes produced.
Every year trainloads of photoflood and photoflash lamps, Christ-
mas tree lights, phototubes such as are used in movie theatres to
convert the film sound track into audible sounds, radio transmis-
sion tubes, radiotherapy tubes, industrial vacuum tub es, and an
army of highly specialized lamps used in medicine and science
are shipped all over the world.
The Company's first real start in making electric lamps was in
1892, when George Westinghouse signed a contract to li ght th e
World's Fair, which was to open the following year in Chicago.
Although the Company had made a few incandescent lamps, this
project was not only the largest Mr. Westinghouse had undertaken
up to that time, but also it was to be the largest installation of the
newfangled electric lamps attempted anywhere in the world.
It involved first of all the construction of twelve alternating cur-
rent generators larger than any previously built. Even more diffi-
cult, it involved the manufacture of 250,000 incandescent lamps
in a few months. While the Company's Trenton, New Jersey,
plant now turns out 300,000 lamps daily, in 1892 there were not
that many electric lamps in the entire country, so the production
of a quarter of a million units seemed an · impossible task.
.
Mr. Westinghouse had two chief problems: first, to design and
perfect a different type of lamp which would not infringe on
patents then held by others; and second, to go into mass produc-
tion of a very fragile article in an age when such manufacturing
methods were only beginning to be understood. The lamp, evolved
in a short time and based on the Westinghouse-owned Sawyer-
Mann patents, was known as the "stopper" lamp. It consisted of a
glass glob e filled at one end by a glass stopper upon which the
carbon filament was mounted. The stopper was ground to fit closely
into th e neck, and was sealed into the bulb, after which the air
was exhausted.
In a brief time ingenious machines were devised to produce
such lamps in quantities in a section of a small red brick building
in Allegheny, Pennsylvania. Packed in straw, these lamps with
their delicate filaments were rushed to the Fair in market baskets.
The lighting was a brilliant success and one of the most dramatic
demonstrations afforded the American public at the turn of the
century.
The incandescent lamp in a few years was to change our life
and customs. Probably no single invention in the history of the
world bas had a more profound effect on the habits and daily life
of men· tpan that which brought light from a little piece of fila-
ment heated to incandescence in a glass tube. Westinghouse pro-
duced the lamps, the Fair showed . them to the country, and elec-
trification has had a steady upward trend since then.
The stopper lamp of the Fair long si nce has been superseded by
more efficient deve_lopments, and now all electric lamps sold for
household use in this country are basically of the same type,
though there are important differences in quality.
Even though extreme care is exercised in the manufacture and
inspection of Westinghouse Mazda lamps, the finished products
are not allowed to leave the factory without passing the critical
eyes of Mazda Service Inspectors, who are independent of the
management of the factory and who subj ect each package to their
sampling and inspection.
LEFT: C. V. Ire-
dell, in left · of
picture, Wire
Products Division
Superintendent,
and staff members
look at a dumet
welder capable
of 200 welds a
minute.
RIGHT: Miss Es-
ther M antze op-
erates a machine
which seals in the
1500-waft Mazda
lamps.
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