Fuse Box Vs CU.

[SUNRAY]

I remember ordering a head lamp, and that is what I got, minus the bulb.

Historically the lamp fitted on a spigot and in the lamp you had wick or mantel and these were replaced with a bulbous bit of glass with a filament inside. Later we had fluorescent tubes and other shapes of blown glass, but lighting industry has a habit of calling new items after what they replace, so bulb it is, even if no longer bulbous.

Same goes for ballast, transformer, and many other devices.

Well AFAIC it's always been a light, lamp, luminaire or fitting and the thing inside that gets white hot is a bulb or tube. 40 years ago nobody would have understood what was wanted if they were asked for a 40W lamp.
Ask for a lamp holder and it would have been a ring on a bracket that the oil lamp hung in.

 

[JohnW2]

Historically the lamp fitted on a spigot and in the lamp you had wick or mantel and these were replaced with a bulbous bit of glass with a filament inside. Later we had fluorescent tubes and other shapes of blown glass, but lighting industry has a habit of calling new items after what they replace, so bulb it is, even if no longer bulbous.

It was obviously a pretty dismal failure, but I don't really understand who tried to change "light bulbs" to "lamps", or why they tried.

There are plenty of examples of (current manifestations of) things that retain their original names, despite the fact that the reason they were originally given those names are no longer applicable ...

• We all have plenty of "saucers", but it is only very rarely, if ever that they have been used as 'small sauce dishes' for a very long time.
• My grandmother had a real "iron" (a lump of cast iron, with a wooden handle) that she used for 'ironing' her clothes etc. but, although they contain a small amount of steel, the modern equivalents contain no "iron", and the act of using them is still called 'ironing'.
• Similarly with the many soldering irons I have. In fact, even the one of my grandfather's which I have (over 100 years old) has a massive lump of copper at the end (and, I guess, a steel shaft), but no obvious 'iron' in sight. I also doubt that golfing 'irons' any longer have any 'iron', do they?

• I also doubt that golfing 'irons' any longer have any 'iron' - and have not heard any suggestion that their name should be changed to things such as "titaniums", "tungstens", "beryllium nickels" or whatever, have you?

... and I'm sure that I could 'go on and on'. Why, I wonder, were 'light bulbs' singled out for this attempt at 'name changing'??

Kind Regards, John

 

[JohnW2]

Well AFAIC it's always been a light, lamp, luminaire or fitting and the thing inside that gets white hot is a bulb or tube.

Quite so.

40 years ago nobody would have understood what was wanted if they were asked for a 40W lamp.

I'm not so sure about that - they probably would have produced a table lamp, standard lamp, inspection lamp or whatever which had a 40W bulb in it

Ask for a lamp holder and it would have been a ring on a bracket that the oil lamp hung in.

Even today, you might not get what you were expecting ...

Kind Regards, John

 

[ericmark]

In the main some word added will define old from new, the electronic transformers for example, but some times that electronic has been dropped as with electronic ballast and although you can fit a LED tube to a wire wound ballast the same does not apply to electronic version.

And there is always an exception be it the fuse holder in the consumer unit, or having as with my old house RCD's feeding fuse boxes.

Phases and words do change meaning decimate to kill one in ten from Roman times seems to now mean reverse leave one in ten.

It seems Bulb is now an energy company, and Hover is a machine not a company, and as to MR16 when with LED no reflector but in the main it is what the manufacturer calls it, if the advert calls it a bulb, 17th edition CU, or a Part P whatever then however daft or confusing that's the word we use.

 

[JohnW2]

In the main some word added will define old from new, the electronic transformers for example ...

Try that with 'light bulb'

... but some times that electronic has been dropped as with electronic ballast and although you can fit a LED tube to a wire wound ballast the same does not apply to electronic version.

I'm not sure that the word 'ballast' made much sense to me even in relation to the wire-wound ones. Those things are/were 'chokes' or 'inductors', so why some different word?.... and, perhaps more to the point, in what way did/does 'ballast' make sense? - the electrical concept seems to have absolutely no relationship with the all the other (and 'pre-electrical') meanings of the word.

Kind Regards, John

 

[RF Lighting]

Try that with 'light bulb'

LED light bulb

 

[Adam_151]

I've always thought it was odd that it was most frowned upon to call the bulbous lamps bulbs, but its not an issue to call the tubular ones tubes....

Interestingly AFAIK the germans refer to Lampe as Birne in a similar way, Birne being the word for pear. So maybe we should try saying "LED pear" instead

 

[JohnW2]

LED light bulb

Yes, I worded that very badly - in fact, more-or-less the opposite of what I really intended

As you know, I am a strong supporter of the belief that they should (as most people do!) still be called 'light bulbs'. As you imply, it is always possible to qualify the words in order to identify subtypes, but that's always been the case. Long before anyone had dreamed of trying to call them all 'lamps', there were all sorts of possible ('clarifying') qualifications of "light bulb" ('halogen', 'energy saving' etc. etc.) , and that remains the case today.

Kind Regards, John

 

[JohnW2]

I've always thought it was odd that it was most frowned upon to call the bulbous lamps bulbs, but its not an issue to call the tubular ones tubes....

I think one needs to get the tenses clear.

Once upon a time, no-one would have dreamed of frowning upon call them bulbs - since that's exactly what there were called, and had been called for decades. It's only since someone decided (fairly unsuccessfully!) to try to change that historic situation that some (and probably only a very small minority) started doing any frowning!

It is really I who (now) 'frowns' at the lunacy of being apparently expected (by some people) to ask, in some situations, for "a lamp to put into my lamp"

Kind Regards, John