US$, $50 million annually - in 2008 dollars; inflation-adjusted
In late 1940s-1950s,
$2 million a year [AAA Dun & Bradstreet rating][1]
Number of employees
200 approximately
Artcraft Fluorescent Lighting Corporation[2] was an American manufacturer of fluorescent lighting fixtures from the time of the public introduction of the fluorescent lamp at the 1939 World's Fair. Artcraft was first to announce a liner showcase striplight fixture and slimline ballast in 1946.[3][4]
Fluorescent lighting was new to consumers, businesses, and professionals, who were familiar with incandescent lighting.[5]
The benefits of fluorescent lighting were lower operating costs, more light for the same power input, and less maintenance.[6][7] The company remained in existence until about 2002 in Brooklyn, NY.[8]
The three top fluorescent fixture manufacturing companies from the beginning were, Lightolier [Blitzer family], the largest, a division of Royal Philips Electronics, with approximately $500 million in annual sales, followed by Artcraft Fluorescent Lighting Corporation [Levy family], and Globe Lighting Products, Inc. [Waitzkin family], originating from New York City.[9]
Sources
Industrial Directory of New York State, 1949ed, 1953ed, vol.3468, pp.638, 684
Mark Stanley Rea, ed. (c. 1993), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Illuminating Engineering Society of North America, New York, Part IV Lighting Applications, Lighting Handbook Reference & Application (8thed.), pp.517–749, ISBN0-87995-102-8 (previous editions published under title: IES lighting handbook)
Electrical Consultant (original from Cornell University - digitized, Feb 1, 2011 - Print Advertisement) Lighting & Lamps, vol.53, 1948, p.21
Electrical West (original from McGraw-Hill Company of California., 1967), vol.134, 1967
Chain Store Age - Super Markets, vol.40, 1964, p.64
"United States Library of Congress", Dun & Bradstreet Corporation Records (Science, Technology & Business Division), Industrial Directories, John Adams Building Collection, Located Off-site at Fort Meade, Manhattan & Bronx & Philadelphia, PA, 1945 Pg. 1481, Feb. 1st 1948, Feb. 1st 1950, Feb 1st 1951, Feb 1st 1952, Pg. 2371, Feb. 1st 1953, Feb. 1st 1954, Feb.1st 1955, Jan. 1st 1956, Jan. 1st 1957., Washington, DC, September 2016
Arthur A. Bright & Rupert Maclaurin (1943), Economic Factors Influencing The Development and Introduction of The Fluorescent Lamp, The Journal of Political Economy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, [MIT], University of Chicago Press, vol.51, pp.429–450
Arthur A. Bright, Jr. (1949), The electric-lamp industry: technological change and economic development from 1800 to 1947, New York, Macmillan Co., pp.399–417, ISBN0-405-04690-1
An incandescent light bulb, incandescent lamp or incandescent light globe is an electric light with a wire filament heated until it glows. The filament is enclosed in a glass bulb with a vacuum or inert gas to protect the filament from oxidation. Current is supplied to the filament by terminals or wires embedded in the glass. A bulb socket provides mechanical support and electrical connections.
Electroluminescence (EL) is an optical and electrical phenomenon, in which a material emits light in response to the passage of an electric current or to a strong electric field. This is distinct from black body light emission resulting from heat (incandescence), a chemical reaction (chemiluminescence), sound (sonoluminescence), or other mechanical action (mechanoluminescence).
An arc lamp or arc light is a lamp that produces light by an electric arc.
A fluorescent lamp, or fluorescent tube, is a low-pressure mercury-vapor gas-discharge lamp that uses fluorescence to produce visible light. An electric current in the gas excites mercury vapor, which produces short-wave ultraviolet light that then causes a phosphor coating on the inside of the lamp to glow. A fluorescent lamp converts electrical energy into useful light much more efficiently than an incandescent lamp. The typical luminous efficacy of fluorescent lighting systems is 50–100 lumens per watt, several times the efficacy of incandescent bulbs with comparable light output. For comparison, the luminous efficacy of an incandescent bulb may only be 16 lumens per watt.
Lighting or illumination is the deliberate use of light to achieve practical or aesthetic effects. Lighting includes the use of both artificial light sources like lamps and light fixtures, as well as natural illumination by capturing daylight. Daylighting is sometimes used as the main source of light during daytime in buildings. This can save energy in place of using artificial lighting, which represents a major component of energy consumption in buildings. Proper lighting can enhance task performance, improve the appearance of an area, or have positive psychological effects on occupants.
A neon lamp is a miniature gas discharge lamp. The lamp typically consists of a small glass capsule that contains a mixture of neon and other gases at a low pressure and two electrodes. When sufficient voltage is applied and sufficient current is supplied between the electrodes, the lamp produces an orange glow discharge. The glowing portion in the lamp is a thin region near the cathode; the larger and much longer neon signs are also glow discharges, but they use the positive column which is not present in the ordinary neon lamp. Neon glow lamps were widely used as indicator lamps in the displays of electronic instruments and appliances. They are still sometimes used for their electrical simplicity in high-voltage circuits.
Daniel McFarlan Moore was a U.S. electrical engineer and inventor. He developed a novel light source, the "Moore lamp", and a business that produced them in the early 1900s. The Moore lamp was the first commercially viable light-source based on gas discharges instead of incandescence; it was the predecessor to contemporary neon lighting and fluorescent lighting. In his later career Moore developed a miniature neon lamp that was extensively used in electronic displays, as well as vacuum tubes that were used in early television systems.
A compact fluorescent lamp (CFL), also called compact fluorescent light, energy-saving light and compact fluorescent tube, is a fluorescent lamp designed to replace an incandescent light bulb; some types fit into light fixtures designed for incandescent bulbs. The lamps use a tube that is curved or folded to fit into the space of an incandescent bulb, and a compact electronic ballast in the base of the lamp.
A metal-halide lamp is an electrical lamp that produces light by an electric arc through a gaseous mixture of vaporized mercury and metal halides. It is a type of high-intensity discharge (HID) gas discharge lamp. Developed in the 1960s, they are similar to mercury vapor lamps, but contain additional metal halide compounds in the quartz arc tube, which improve the efficiency and color rendition of the light. The most common metal halide compound used is sodium iodide. Once the arc tube reaches its running temperature, the sodium dissociates from the iodine, adding orange and reds to the lamp's spectrum from the sodium D line as the metal ionizes. As a result, metal-halide lamps have high luminous efficacy of around 75–100 lumens per watt, which is about twice that of mercury vapor lights and 3 to 5 times that of incandescent lights and produce an intense white light. Lamp life is 6,000 to 15,000 hours. As one of the most efficient sources of high CRI white light, metal halides as of 2005 were the fastest growing segment of the lighting industry. They are used for wide area overhead lighting of commercial, industrial, and public places, such as parking lots, sports arenas, factories, and retail stores, as well as residential security lighting, automotive headlamps and indoor cannabis grow operations.
Sylvania Electric Products Inc. was an American manufacturer of diverse electrical equipment, including at various times radio transceivers, vacuum tubes, semiconductors, and mainframe computers such as MOBIDIC. They were one of the companies involved in the development of the COBOL programming language.
Neon lighting consists of brightly glowing, electrified glass tubes or bulbs that contain rarefied neon or other gases. Neon lights are a type of cold cathode gas-discharge light. A neon tube is a sealed glass tube with a metal electrode at each end, filled with one of a number of gases at low pressure. A high potential of several thousand volts applied to the electrodes ionizes the gas in the tube, causing it to emit colored light. The color of the light depends on the gas in the tube. Neon lights were named for neon, a noble gas which gives off a popular orange light, but other gases and chemicals are used to produce other colors, such as hydrogen (red), helium (yellow), carbon dioxide (white), and mercury (blue). Neon tubes can be fabricated in curving artistic shapes, to form letters or pictures. They are mainly used to make dramatic, multicolored glowing signage for advertising, called neon signs, which were popular from the 1920s to 1960s and again in the 1980s.
An electrical ballast is a device placed in series with a load to limit the amount of current in an electrical circuit.
Gas-discharge lamps are a family of artificial light sources that generate light by sending an electric discharge through an ionized gas, a plasma.
A light fixture, light fitting, or luminaire is an electrical device containing an electric lamp that provides illumination. All light fixtures have a fixture body and one or more lamps. The lamps may be in sockets for easy replacement—or, in the case of some LED fixtures, hard-wired in place.
A lighting control system is an intelligent network based lighting control solution that incorporates communication between various system inputs and outputs related to lighting control with the use of one or more central computing devices. Lighting control systems are widely used on both indoor and outdoor lighting of commercial, industrial, and residential spaces. Lighting control systems are sometimes referred to under the term smart lighting. Lighting control systems serve to provide the right amount of light where and when it is needed.
Stage lighting instruments are used in stage lighting to illuminate theatrical productions, concerts, and other performances taking place in live performance venues. They are also used to light television studios and sound stages.
An LED lamp or LED light bulb is an electric light that produces light using light-emitting diodes (LEDs). LED lamps are significantly more energy-efficient than equivalent incandescent lamps and can be significantly more efficient than most fluorescent lamps. The most efficient commercially available LED lamps have efficiencies of 200 lumen per watt (Lm/W). Commercial LED lamps have a lifespan many times longer than incandescent lamps.
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The Chicago Lighting Institute opened on April 11, 1930 as an educational and marketing association for the lighting industry in the Midwest. Supported by five full corporate members and fifty associate corporate members, it sought to acquaint architects, interior designers, electrical engineers, urban planners and the general public with the latest developments and applications in lighting. It was the largest cooperative Institute fostering better lighting practices in the United States and, as such, was the pioneer U.S. institution promoting appropriate use of light in the earlier years of the lighting industry. In 1968, after 38 years of service, the Institute merged with the Chicago Electric Association.
LED tube is a type of LED lamp used in fluorescent tube luminaires with G5 and G13 bases to replace traditional fluorescent tubes. As compared to fluorescent tubes, the most important advantages of LED tubes are energy efficiency and long service life. LED tubes are sometimes also referred to as ‘LED fluorescent tubes’.
References
↑ Dun & Bradstreet, Artcraft Fluorescent Corporation Financial Records 1945-1957, Library of Congress, Washington D.C., Retrieved September 2016
↑ Industrial Directory of New York State, 1949ed, 1953ed
↑ John H. Campbell, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories, The University of California, Berkeley, California, The History and Technical Evolution of High Frequency Lighting, pages 1-2, 1977
↑ Mark Stanley Rea, PH.D. FIES, Editor-In-Chief, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, The Lighting Handbook and Reference, 1993
↑ Arthur A. Bright and Rupert Maclaurin, Economic Factors Influencing The Development and Introduction of The Fluorescent Lamp, The Journal of Political Economy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, [MIT], University of Chicago Press, 51, No.5, 1943, pp. 429-450
↑ New York State, Division of Corporations, State Records
↑ Paul Levy, Early industry leaders in New York City, Sillman Family Private Collection, 1998
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US $, $50 million annually - in 2008 dollars; inflation-adjusted 
