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When a light on the car packs up, you simply stop by a garage or petrol station to get a new bulb. Well, they do have a history - and it's interesting.

Developments in car lighting systems have not been revolutionary. After the first, good-looking but hardly functional carbide lanterns and simple incandescent lamps, the first truly innovative developments took place in the early '20s with the dual filament, or 'Duplo lamp.

This development was followed 30 years later by the 'Duplo-d lamp featuring an asymmetrical light beam. These allowed the combination of dipped and high beam light in one lamp.

Halogen

It took no less than 40 years before a next generation of lamps was introduced - halogen. The halogen lamp provides 50% more light for less energy than the incandescent lamp, lasts longer, and has a constant light output. It was, however, still a lamp with only one filament.

Ten years later, in the early '70s, the successor of the 'Duplo'-d lamp arrived. This was the H4 lamp, featuring two filaments but providing twice the amount of light for much less energy.

Since then, the halogen lamp has become the standard light source for car lighting.

Improved lamps

Today, 35 years after the first halogen lamp was introduced, there is a new family of products, including greatly improved halogen lamps providing better illumination The intensity of the light beam has increased by 20% and glare is reduced 30%. And there is Philips' H4 Allweather, featuring a special colour filter that allows the motorist to see better in rain, fog and snow.

Ideal solution

The high pressure XENON lamp is ideal for car headlighting systems. It offers more than twice the amount of light of halogen for half the energy and a better quality of lighting. As a result, traffic safety increases.

Moreover, designers are given the opportunity to develop entirely new headlamps that give a car its own character.

New applications

Using gas-discharge technology allows entirely new applications. Because of its highly concentrated light, the light source is well suited to the application of distributed light via fibre optic light conductors.

Research has shown that XENON lamps provide sufficient luminous energy in a distributive system to meet all current main-beam requirements.

Low-pressure gas-discharge lamps

But also the low-pressure gas-discharge lamps are significantly brighter than an equivalent incandescent lamp and consume only about 60% of the power. They also last three times as long and the absence of a filament means that they are highly shock-resistant.

The lifetime of the latest brakelights lamps is around 2,000 hours or some 800,000 braking operations. This more or less represents the life span of a typical car, which means these lamps will probably never need replacing. In different colours, low-pressure gas-discharge lamps could also be used for other lighting purposes in the back of the vehicle, such as fog lights and indicator lights.

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