Manufacturer: General Electric Company
Model: Lightstream Coloured Sealed Dichroic Halogen lamp.  12V 50W 10° Green
Application: Display, decorative lighting
Wattage: 50W
Diameter (max): 50mm
Length: 46mm
Tube Length: --
Bulb/Tube material: Outer: Glass, dichroic cold light mirror coating on reflector.  Front: green dichroic filter on outside of lens.  Inner: Quartz
Colour Temperature: Unknown
Peak output wavelength: N/A - Broadband emission
Total light output: Unknown
Rated lifetime: Not stated
Cap: G5
Operating voltage: 12V
Operating current: 4A
Warmup/restrike time: None
Cost (original): Unknown
Value (now): --
Place of manufacture: Great Britain
Date of manufacture: Unknown - Codes M1 and M249 G present on lamp.
Current Status: Working
Notes:  

Over the last couple of years this style of lamp have started to become increasingly common.  There have however started to be an increasing number of cheap imitations too.  The better lamps generally employ lamps with a proper dichroic colour filter on the front, and a dichroic cold light mirror on the reflector.  The cheaper versions will skimp on one of both of these, often using a simple coloured coating on the lens.  The results of this tend to be a lamp which will fade in colour, suffer from the coating flaking off, or in some cases, even the front lens cracking in normal use.

This one however isn't one of the cheap imitations.  It's a very nicely finished example of the technology, only slightly let down by the use of a horizontal rather than axial filament (which is slightly misaligned too).  So the beam isn't perfect.  The metal rim used to hold the front glass into this example is a nice touch from a cosmetic point of view, and works well from a functional point of view.  The reflector in this lamp is only partly textured, this helps to keep the beam narrow (just as well given the 10° spec), as you might expect, this introduces a couple of slight artefacts into the beam as mentioned earlier.  If the lamp were being used to light a display, this would not be noticeable - however I'd say that it does detract somewhat if it's being used to create something like a colour wash over a white wall or something similar - when the artefacts are more visible.

 

 
 
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Lamp added to the Virtual Display Shelf on Thursday 22nd December 2005 at 20:22.

References: None.

Acknowledgements: Many thanks to the website reader who donated this lamp!


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