Prior to the development of the fluorescent tube (often referred to as ‘strip lighting’), retailers were reliant on the standard ‘incandescent’ light bulb.
The arrival of fluorescent lighting gave them a highly economical alternative. Fluorescent lights produce a lot of light – ideal for illuminating merchandise to its best advantage, day or night – consume very little energy, and generate very little heat. The average life of fluorescent bulbs is long, reducing the labor involved in replacing them.
Think of a light bulb and you summon up the name of Thomas Edison, its inventor, but although Edison dabbled with fluorescent lighting, he lost interest in it. Others experimented further, but it wasn’t until 1901 that Peter Cooper Hewitt patented the first ‘mercury vapor lamp’, which was the prototype of the fluorescent tube.
Hewitt’s work built on that of German physicist, Julius Plucker, and glassblower, Heinrich Geissler, who realized that if you passed an electric current through a glass tube with small amounts of gas in it, you could make light. Hewitt began experimenting and discovered that the brightness of these mercury-filled lights was truly illuminating. The lights would be too bright for domestic homes, so his thoughts turned to photographic use and industrial studios. Together with George Westinghouse, he formed the Cooper Hewitt Electric Company to produce the first commercial mercury lamps. In 1934, Edmund Germer, whose lights were more powerful and better suited to smaller spaces, adapted their concept.
In 1936, George Inman of General Electric (GE) in Ohio, filed for a patent and GE began to prepare to introduce these lamps commercially. On April 21, 1938, the company’s fluorescent MAZDA lamps were put on sale. They produced ‘colored lights’ and offered economies and efficiencies that would forever change lighting in retail stores.
Contribution to Retail History
The fluorescent tube allowed retailers to illuminate their stores more economically, while generating less heat and facilitated extended opening hours. Lighting could also now be used to create different ambiences throughout different parts of the store – the concept of ‘mood lighting’. It also had a positive impact on merchandising displays, enabling lighting within fixtures, not purely from an overhead source.