Manufacturer: Philips
Model: TL 8W/35 - Pink Coated
Application: General Lighting / Decorative / Special Effects
Wattage: 8W
Diameter (max): 15mm
Length: 300mm (including pins)
Tube Length: 265mm
Bulb/Tube material: Glass, halophosphor inner coating.  Pink external laquer finish.
Colour Temperature: Pink.
Peak output wavelength: Unknown
Total Light Output: Unknown
Rated lifetime: Unknown
Cap: Bi-Pin fluorescent fitting
Operating voltage: 56V AC
Operating current: 145mA
Warmup/restrike time: 1 minutes/none
Cost (original): Unknown
Value (now): £5.00 approx.
Place of manufacture: Holland
Date of manufacture: August 1988 - Date code H8 shown on lamp.
Lamp Status: Working, used - no packaging provided.
Notes: Now here's a bit of a head scratcher.

Quite an old 3500K white 8W fluorescent tube which has been coated with a really vivid pink laquer.  It's unclear whether the lamp left the factory like this, whether the finish was applied by a distributor, or whether the end user applied it for a reason such as using the light for theatrical effects - which it could have provided quite an effective low intensity colour wash.

The heat of the tube as you can see has resulted in the finish shrinking and cracking quite a bit, resulting in quite an interesting crackled finish.  While a bit of an issue if the tube is directly viewed - if this were to be used indirectly to provide background lighting or similar effects that's really not a problem unless a very large amount of it flakes off, to the extent that it could significantly reduce the saturation of the colour.

The colour is actually much as you see it below - really quite a saturated "hot pink" colour when lit.  The tube takes on more of a magenta hue when viewed unlit though...a colour which plays havoc with any digital camera's colour balance and doesn't get treated too kindly by JPEG compression...so the images maybe aren't quite as clean looking as they might normally be.

The spectral plot did come out quite well though - the main notable function that this coating serves you can quite clearly see is that it completely suppresses the normally very visible green mercury line and significantly attenuates the somewhat dimmer blue one.
Click thumbnails for full size images

 

 



 

 

 

 


 

This lamp added to the Virtual Display Shelf on the 27th August at 23:35.


References: F8T5 Datasheet on SLI Lighting's website (to obtain current/voltage specs).


Acknowledgements: Many thanks to the website visitor who donated this (and many other!) lamps for display.


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