Old USA street lighting found in The Netherlands

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by old_tv_nut

Jeff is confused. Incandescent street lights were phased out in favor of mercury vapor in the early 1950s. (Low pressure sodium and fluorescent were used in relatively few places.) Mercury vapor was later replaced by high pressure sodium.

I thought incandescent street lights were replaced by LEDs and no other kind, once the mercury-vapor and sodium bulbs were phased out for good unless, as you said, I have things mixed up. This would make sense to me, since LED streetlights must have been the next logical step up from incandescent bulbs. This was probably done when the incandescent bulbs eventually burned out; as I said in my last post, I have seen these bulbs burn out with a bright white flash when they were switched on (I remember seeing, on the street in front of my former home in a Cleveland suburb, at least one such bulb burn out with an unmistakable flash as soon as the bulb was switched on, leaving that part of the street dark, but I have never yet seen more than one streetlight burn out at the same time; I've lived where I live now for over 20 years, which may well be the normal life span for LP [low-pressure] sodium and mercury-vapor streetlight bulbs, even bulbs which are left on literally from dusk to dawn).

[MIPS]

Incandescent was rapidly phased out in streetlights as soon as mercury vapor, fluorescent and low pressure sodium became viable (around the 50's and 60's) as all three consumed considerably less power per luminous watt and lasted far longer than an incandescent bulb. Once High pressure sodium and metal halide lamps were introduced in the 70's fluorescent and a lot of mercury vapor was converted as both became the least efficient street lighting technologies. By the 80's Fluorescent, MV, LPS, HPS and HID were the primary exterior and street lighting technologies and Incandescent was long out of use for street lights.
The LED was technologically impossible to make in white until the invention of the blue LED in the 90's.
The white LED wasn't commercially viable until the late 2000's. LED's powerful enough and long lasting enough to survive in a street light didn't appear in volume until the 2010's, around which time almost everywhere had phased out fluorescent and mercury vapor had been banned in new installations along with the sale of replacement bulbs. Low pressure sodium went End of Life gracefully when Philips stopped manufacturing new bulbs and metal halide has been gradually replaced with LED.