When a man by the name of Edmund Germer born in Berlin, Germany invented a high pressure vapor lamp. He improved the fluorescent lamp and the high-pressure mercury-vapor lamp so that it allowed more lighting with less heat and less cost than the incandescent light.

The German born inventor was quite involved in the lighting industry. He graduated with a doctorate in lighting technology from the University of Berlin. His goal was to invent a better light source that produced higher lumen output and lower energy consumption compared to the incandescent lamp.

Later in 1930 he freelance with Osram and Phillips where it led him to licensed to General Electric his fluorescent lamp and high-pressure mercury-vapor lamp. He later brought his family to America in 1951 . In the years of 1926 to 1955 he obtained 22 patents in the United States and 30 from Germany which he was the sole inventor.

He died in Aug 10 1987 but the idea of improving or changing has never stopped.

You see fluorescent lamps everywhere – they are a much part of our everyday living to stores, business, homes, hospital and the list goes on. Did you ever wonders how they work? What makes them do what they do? The next few articles will tell you just that.

To see how fluorescent lamps works, you need to know a little about lighting itself. Light is a form of energy that can be released by an atom. It has many small particle-like packets that have energy and momentum but no mass. The particles are called light photons and is the basic unit of light.

Well atoms release light photons when electrons become excited. To see how a Atom works you need to know electrons are the negatively charged particles that move around an atom’s nucleus (which has a net positive charge). An atom’s electrons have different levels of energy, depending on different factors, including speed and the distance from the nucleus. Electrons of different energy levels occupy different orbital. Therefore, electrons with greater energy move in orbital farther away from the nucleus.

When an atom gains or loses energy, the change is done by movement of the electrons. When something passes e nergy thru an atom, like heat for an example. A electron is temporarily boosted to a higher orbital pulling away from the nucleus. The electron only holds that position for a tiny fraction of a second. Then immediately, it drawn back toward the nucleus, unto its original orbital. As it goes back to its original orbital the electron releases the extra energy in the form of a photon, in some cases a light photon.

How much energy released will produce the emitted light. Which all depends on the particular position of the electron. Consequently different sorts of atoms will produce different sorts of light photons. In other words the color of the light is determined by what kind of atom is excited.

That is pretty much the bases of all lighting sources. The main difference between theses sources is the process of exciting the atoms. Take for example an incandescent light bulb, or gas lamp, the atoms are exited by heat. A light stick, atoms are exited by chemical reaction. Now fluorescents lamps have one of most complicated systems for exciting atoms as you will see in our next section.

The central element in a fluorescent lamp is a sealed glass tube. The tube contains a small bit of mercury and inert gas, typically argon kept under very low pressure. The tube also contains a phosphor powder, coated along the inside of the glass. The tube also has two electrodes, one at each end, which are wired to an electrical circuit. The electrical circuit is hooked up to an alternating current (AC) supply. When the lamp is turned on the current flows through the electrical circuit to the electrodes. There is a considerable voltage across the electrodes, so electrons will migrate through the gas from one end of the tube to the other. This energy changes some of the mercury in the tube from a liquid to a gas. As electrons and charged atoms move through the tube, some of them will collide with the gaseous mercury atoms. These collisions excite the atom, bumping electrons up to higher energy levels. When the electrons return to their original energy level, they release light photons.

The electrons in mercury atoms are arranged in such a way that they mostly release light photons in the ultraviolet wavelength range. Our eyes don’t register ultraviolet photons, so this kind of light needs to be converted into visible light to illuminate the lamp. This is where the tube’s phosphor powder coating comes in. Phosphors are substances that give off light when they are exposed to light. When a photon hits a phosphor atom, one of the phosphor’s electrons jumps to a higher energy level and the atom heats up. When the electron falls back to its normal level, it releases energy in the form of another photon. This photon has less energy than the original photon, because some energy was lost as heat. In a fluorescent lamp, the emitted light is the visible spectrum the phosphor gives off white light we can see. Now manufactures can vary the color of the light by using different combinations of phosphors.