We need some input from Terry here, but we developed the 34-watt T12
energy saving lamp while I was working at GE Lighting in the
mid-1970's. One problem with the lamp was that due to the lower lamp
voltage the 34-watt lamp placed more voltage stress on the internal
capacitor in rapid start ballasts. When the new 34-watt lamp was
installed in fixtures with old rapid start ballasts, many of the
capacitors, which were near end of life anyway, blew. So these
ballasts must have been almost 20 years old by 1975- which means they
were popular by the mid-1950s. By the mid-1970's the 40-watt rapid
start lamp was nearing the end of its life due to the new 34-watt
rapid start lamp.


Those 34W lamps were (and are) awful, always dim and they flicker if it's
even a bit chilly. I always thought it was so silly that with the
regulations for efficiency of the lamps and ballasts the end result was that
we had more efficient but dim lamps so you had to use more of them resulting
in a net increase in ballast losses and overall power.


Well, we had lots of Power Groove lamps at Nela Park along with its
inventor - who I believe was Gene Lemmers - who also co-invented the
rapid start ballast, I believe with John Aicher. Terry, can you help
here? The Power Groove lamp was introduced by GE about 1956 and was a
rapid start lamp, so the basic rapid start system must be older than
that.

I didn't realize the PG's came out so long ago. HO and VHO have always been
RS as far as I know, for some reason it took longer for RS to catch on for
indoor use though, I'm not really sure why. You don't see many PG lamps
anymore, I think only the 96" version is still in production. VHO in general
is not real popular these days, I have a couple 4' VHO fixtures in my
garage, they're very bright but not real efficient and the phosphor is hit
so hard with UV that it degrades fairly rapidly. It'd probably work well
using a modern trichromatic phosphor but as far as I know nobody makes
those.