Xenon Bulbs

Germany was the first to introduce the Xenon lamp in the 1940’s, Osram were the first lighting company to develop the concept of Xenon lighting in 1951 and were soon to see a wide acceptance in the movie projection industry. Even nowadays the same concepts behind Xenon theatre lighting are used in movie theatres across the globe. 

The demand for xenon technologies soon spread into the consumer market with the introduction in 1991 of xenon headlamps for cars. The glass capsule inside the headlamps were small and the arc spans came to only around a few millimetres in size. With the additions of mercury, salts and scandium providing help for improving the lumen output. The xenon gas was present to provide instant lighting on ignition.

Being an artificial light source powered by electricity, Xenon bulbs produce light similar to that of pure natural daylight. This is due to the ionisation of xenon gas which produces the daylight-like lighting.

There are three main types of Xenon Lamps:

1. Short arc lamps.

2. Long arc lamps.

3. Xenon flash lamps.
 

Xenon lamps have an average life expectancy of 2000 hours, this is because each bulb comprises of a fused quartz arc tube with tungsten metal electrodes at each end of the lamp. The glass tube is first evacuated and then re-filled with the xenon gas. However for xenon flash tube lighting, there is a third trigger present, surrounding the outer area of the arc tube.