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Irving Langmuir and the light bulb

Graeme Lister

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Irving Langmuir's principal contribution to lighting was a major improvement in the efficiency of the incandescent lamp. He also used experiments on these lamps to provide fundamental new insight into a number of other areas of physics, including evaporation of metals, the space charge limited current in a vacuum and thermionic emission of electrons from metallic surfaces. This paper describes his experiments, and the chain of ideas which led him to new discoveries.


PACS

52.80.Mg Arcs; sparks; lightning; atmospheric electricity

42.72.Bj Visible and ultraviolet sources

Subjects

Optics, quantum optics and lasers

Plasma physics

Dates

Issue 1 (February 2009)

Received 12 July 2008, in final form 19 September 2008

Published 14 November 2008



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