A Standing Ovation for LED Lights!

The sights and sounds of the theatre. Nothing quite compares for a night of entertainment. And if a theatre production is good enough the final curtain will be greeted by a standing ovation. The audience rises from its seats to applaud the cast of the show.

The history of electric lighting is a drama of a different sort and the most recent actor to take to the metaphorical stage is the LED. What kind of reaction will it elicit from the audience? Will it be applauded? Or will it be heckled off the stage? If the debut of the incandescent bulb at the Savoy Theatre is anything to go by the response will be ecstatic.

The Savoy Theatre in London isn't just famous for its Gilbert and Sullivan premieres. It was also the first public building in the world to be lit entirely with electricity.

As part of the theatre's redesign in 1881, 1,200 incandescent lamps were introduced to replace its old gas-burners. They were powered by a single 120 horsepower generator located on an adjacent piece of common ground and supplied by Sir Joseph Swan who had received a patent for their design only a year beforehand.

The power requirements of the incandescent bulbs was so demanding that the generator proved to be inadequate and the stage had to continue using its gas-burners until a larger one could be found.

The bulbs were held in high esteem by the theatre's owner Richard D'Oyly Carte, who claimed that they would make the theatre experience more enjoyable by removing the "foul air and heat" produced by the gas-burners.

Carte was so determined to prove the safety of the bulbs that he performed a demonstration on the stage of the theatre. In a scene of unscripted comedy the entire audience watched as Carte dropped the bulb only to have it smash to pieces on the floor.

It might only be me, but this sounds like a less than satisfactory demonstration of the safety features of a bulb. Broken shards of glass aren't in the least bit safe.

Unlike the incandescent, an LED Bulb would not have gone to pieces at its debut performance. In fact, because they are so durable an LED would have held it together. It would have remained in-tact instead of breaking.

As far as performances go, the incandescent just can't compete with an LED. Even a bulb that uses as little as 4.5 watts will still produce the same lumen output as a 50 watt halogen. The energy they save is a massive step in saving our environment and if that doesn't deserve a round of applause then we don't know what does.

So why didn't the theatre use LED Lights instead? Well unfortunatley for them LED Lights wouldn't be available for about another century. The funny thing is that the design of the incandescent bulb has barely changed during that time. All the more reason to switch to LED!