Old USA street lighting found in The Netherlands

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by old_tv_nut

Jeff is confused. Incandescent street lights were phased out in favor of mercury vapor in the early 1950s. (Low pressure sodium and fluorescent were used in relatively few places.) Mercury vapor was later replaced by high pressure sodium.

I thought incandescent street lights were replaced by LEDs and no other kind, once the mercury-vapor and sodium bulbs were phased out for good unless, as you said, I have things mixed up. This would make sense to me, since LED streetlights must have been the next logical step up from incandescent bulbs. This was probably done when the incandescent bulbs eventually burned out; as I said in my last post, I have seen these bulbs burn out with a bright white flash when they were switched on (I remember seeing, on the street in front of my former home in a Cleveland suburb, at least one such bulb burn out with an unmistakable flash as soon as the bulb was switched on, leaving that part of the street dark, but I have never yet seen more than one streetlight burn out at the same time; I've lived where I live now for over 20 years, which may well be the normal life span for LP [low-pressure] sodium and mercury-vapor streetlight bulbs, even bulbs which are left on literally from dusk to dawn).