They were more like floro tubes - consistent CCT at a fixed power level.
Took some nontrivial engineering to get LED bulbs to dim at all on the various topologies for incandescent dimmers then even more to replicate the variable-CCT behavior of incandescent filaments.
The typical light bulb customer seems to make their purchasing decision on the spot, understands price, and mostly understands incandescent incandescent wattage equivalence. And even with home despots and megalomarts installing live displays showcasing varying CCTs, understanding of the semistandard marketing terms - SOFT WHITE, WARM WHITE, BRIGHT WHITE, TRUE WHITE, DAYLIGHT - seems elusive, thus the placement of 2700K in the most intuitive grabb’n spot is key to cutting down on RMAs.
But mostly they yearn for the era of ~$1/bulb incandescents. And when they grudgingly spent the money on CFLs or LEDs they expected heeuge savings on their energy bill (remember a co-worker that swapped out incandescent for CFLs ~15 years ago then muttered about how it saved them no money … on their July vs June bill … when they were on yearly average billing). Doesn’t matter if the bulb lasts a decade, has 5% of the TCO of incandescent, dims nicely, dims at all, features dial-a-CCT, works with Alexa, can tell you where you left your keys, whatever - it must be as cheap as possible.
I haven’t seen one of those in years. Closest I last saw was near the end of the massive Al heatsink era that had a downward-firing COB pointing at a similar-looking diffuser - this fkn thing:
At least I got tube replacements and fixture-replacement bulbs (the kind that the Eddie Muenster guy on that technology channel hates) that do let you select 4-5 levels between cw and ww.
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Back then, the only dimming to speak of was phase-shifted triacs, snapping on partway after the beginning of the half-cycle. So they designed for that, and it worked surprisingly well.
The control was the integral potentiometer, not the fanciful 0-5V selectors, etc.
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I was still referring to back when LED bulbs weren’t cheap, still on par with curlies, and still not reduced to sub-penny tweaking.
Early curlies weren’t dimmable at all, and I don’t recall any curlies ever being true dimmable. So I don’t think they put too much importance on dimmable LEDs when curlies weren’t.
But yeah, then as now, Cheap Reigns.
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Yeah, that’s the beastie.
Oh, should add, that’s almost certainly a white COB, not remote phosphor.
I unearthed a bunch of OG Philips LED bulbs. 5000K, discrete switcher in the base, assloads of heatsinking, lifetime likely measured in decades.
Efficiency comparable to curlies, though, so not 7W/13W for 60W/100W equivalents, but more like 14W/25W, all respectively.
Today’s shiite on the same plate has those linear droppers and high-voltage strings of LEDs. Most efficient, but nowhere near the lifetime of those OGs.
Even the disc-light in my bathroom was annoyingly bright at first, but aged enough to probably it’s half-brightness level or less, that it’s not so annoying anymore.
Imagine it’s worse for 100W equiv snowcones. So few LEDs, pushed so hard that they’re screaming, I don’t see them having any good lumen maintenance at all.
(Goddamned “autocorrect” keeps “fixing” snowcones to “snow ones”.)
Home despot sells dial-a-CCT house brand now. Expect those to be standard soon enough (along with dial-a-wattage) because SKU reduction is very much something the supply side loves. Suspect I’ll do some spreadsheet at some point to try to simulate CCT at some point using multiple bulbs w/ CCT * lumen output because I sure like futzing with multiple CCTs in linear vanity fixtures to hit a tint the OEMs don’t offer.
At some vague point before they lost the war to LED (or relentless cost-cutting ruled it out) they were at least tolerant of dimmers - mostly as a signal to the user along the lines of hey a__hole - cut that out. I owned some at one point and their behavior on the dimmer was … weird.
Absolutely COB and not remote phosphor. Too late and too GD cheap. IIRC remote-phosphor was limited to Philips consumer version of the X-prize bulb. I paid $39.99 for that thing circa 2010 and still have it … somewhere.
Curlies and even LEDs would go into Random Lightning Mode with even x10 switches or anything which wasn’t an actual physical switch. Leakage current would charge the Internet cap then “fire” at random.
Whups… my #4 was sitting on my chest (“elephant with peg-legs”) and licking my nose. No idea why. Typoes…
Wtf?? Window f’ed up, left half is off God knows where.
Rich got me into playing with the candle mode in Anduril more when we were discussing the Amber zircon filters . Out of curiosity I took the filters he’d bought and tossed them up on top of a light we both owned . A light a lot of people own. The TS 10 4000k . He bought a sheet of 1/2 cto and a sheet of the darkest Amber zircon filter that Lee sells . It led me to start making wispy fake flames out of tissue paper and doubling up on the darkest Amber sheet I sell .
That was the start of a candlight craze for me that has morphed into lits of bigger fake plastic flames off of led votive candles and off of candles you’d put in your windows for the holidays. It made me take a second look at the sunset timer feature on Anduril again as well . Two things on Anduril I’d happily ignored .
regarding warm/red ambient light…i am cheap enough just to use a red filter.
sometimes it takes more than one filter to tone down the 5000+'s.
and, yes, i have used the ubiquitous Red Solo Cup.
