We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember John Rumm
saying something like:

I also expect that is is a corruption of the original research that was
looking at overall costs including lamp life and not just running costs.
It has just that much of the detail has been lost in the Chinese
whispers along the way and it has been reduced to an absurdity
concerning just energy costs.

Ding!

The first time I read about this was nearly 30 years ago in New
Scientist, where the article made the point it was about overall
lifetime of the lamp and fittings, rather than electricity consumption.
In that original article there was bare mention at all of the start-up
energy cost, probably because it was insignificant. The piece
illustrated how the lifetime of a lamp was reduced by multiple starts,
and showed that it was more economical *at that time* to reduce the
number of starts, or once started, leave the lamp on for a while.

At that time, with the fluorescent lamps and fittings available and the
energy cost of the day, the break-even point was 20 minutes.

It's usenet, so it's not unknown for the ill-informed start an argument
without knowing the full story.
--

Dave