Watt the...?
Why the hell are we still labelling light-bulbs in watts? The energy consumption of a light-bulb is rarely the overriding criteria for choice (otherwise we'd be saving energy by sitting in the dark), it's whether it's bright enough for its intended purpose.
Maybe, back when all commodity household bulbs were incandescents, it was enough to state the wattage. But that hasn't been the case for a few years now. Now, as well as communicating the actual energy consumption, they also need to somehow communicate their level of brightness.
As a subjective property, "brightness" makes for confusing indicia. At the moment all CFL packaging seems to rely on familiarity with the brightness of the incandescent they're presumably replacing. Remember when you were a child? Remember how bright an old fashioned 60W bulb would be? This bulb is as bright as that. Almost.
I'd like to hope that at some point the packaging designers thought to themselves "Hold on a minute, by continuing to market bulbs by wattage we're just compounding the error. What happens if we create even more efficient light-bulbs that are brighter at the same wattage - how do we communicate that?"
Perhaps they'd suggested the obvious solution: switch to using lumens (lm), the SI unit for luminous flux. Light-bulbs already have a lumen rating printed on the box, but usually in tiny type on the bottom. It's already used in the marketing of projector bulbs.
Maybe research was done. Maybe this idea was dismissed as too confusing for the public.
Years from now, it wouldn't surprise me if the EU attempts to standardise us out of this situation. "Back off Brussels," the British tabloids will snarl, "we invented light-bulbs - and if we want to refer to their brightness by comparison with a product no longer legally sold, we'll bloody well do so."
Maybe, back when all commodity household bulbs were incandescents, it was enough to state the wattage. But that hasn't been the case for a few years now. Now, as well as communicating the actual energy consumption, they also need to somehow communicate their level of brightness.
As a subjective property, "brightness" makes for confusing indicia. At the moment all CFL packaging seems to rely on familiarity with the brightness of the incandescent they're presumably replacing. Remember when you were a child? Remember how bright an old fashioned 60W bulb would be? This bulb is as bright as that. Almost.
I'd like to hope that at some point the packaging designers thought to themselves "Hold on a minute, by continuing to market bulbs by wattage we're just compounding the error. What happens if we create even more efficient light-bulbs that are brighter at the same wattage - how do we communicate that?"
Perhaps they'd suggested the obvious solution: switch to using lumens (lm), the SI unit for luminous flux. Light-bulbs already have a lumen rating printed on the box, but usually in tiny type on the bottom. It's already used in the marketing of projector bulbs.
Maybe research was done. Maybe this idea was dismissed as too confusing for the public.
Years from now, it wouldn't surprise me if the EU attempts to standardise us out of this situation. "Back off Brussels," the British tabloids will snarl, "we invented light-bulbs - and if we want to refer to their brightness by comparison with a product no longer legally sold, we'll bloody well do so."
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