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I created this page since I didn't find this kind of information in a nice form anywhere. I hope people will hind it useful. I would appreciate if anyone could help especially with the non-European bulbs since I don't personally have lots of information about them. I'll also add a To Do -list to this talk page - feel free to edit. Thanks. -- MattiPaavola ( talk) 11:19, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Filament type (axial vs. transversal) is interesting to know, since the best type for distant light projection is the axial type. Tranverse filament types usually render inferior light patterns, but could be useful when a wide pattern is desired (as in fog light headlamps). Amclaussen. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.100.180.20 ( talk) 18:41, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

You're mistaken; it is not the case that transverse filaments "usually render inferior light patterns", and it is not the case that lamps equipped with axial-filament bulbs necessarily give longer beam reach than those equipped with transverse filaments. — Scheinwerfermann ^T· _C19:25, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

• U.S. bulbs
• Canadian bulbs?
• Japanese bulbs?
• Caps (bases) for the European group 1
• Historical bulbs such as H2 -- MattiPaavola ( talk) 14:14, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
• More bulb names are missing. E.g. the ones sold in Canada like 1156(21W, for reverse lights or blinkers) 1157(brake21w+parking5w) 1157+amber(forgot the designation) etc. I think I saw the images here (not sure if they are the exact same ones) but only "921" has the numeric name too.
• Also, some ppl call the 2-tipped bulbs "festoon" (or "sofit" in other languages).

Replies

There are no Canadian-specific bulbs. Canada permits US- and ECE-spec bulbs. There have been many strange Japan-only bulbs; they are _very_ difficult to document. Cap for H2 is X511 per IEC 7004-99 (holder per IEC 7005-99). 03:23, 17 February 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.63.52.205 ( talk)

Thanks for the info. I modified the To Do -list above accordingly. -- MattiPaavola ( talk) 14:14, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

See above for 1156, 1157 etc. They call them this way in Canada, so we need to at least add the name equivalences when they are ascertained.

1156 and 1157 are 27W and 27/8W respectively, not 21W (7506) and 21/5W (7528). The US (FMVSS108) and the ECE bulb standards are not the same (e.g. US allows brass bases) and often confused in the US/Canada market as illustrated in To Do, though US packaging is more frequently listing both the ECE type and trade number across competing manufacturers when applicable (e.g. GE, Eiko, Sylvania) whereas a 1157 will bear no ECE type.

I don't think there's high value in listing all the ANSI standard bulbs used in automobile applications - unless we can find something notable to say about automotive bulbs, you're better off looking at a manufacturer's catalog like [ [1]] and not here. -- Wtshymanski ( talk) 13:58, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

I agree with you. I'm not sure I see a cohesive encyclopædic goal to this article in its present form. Does it want to discuss the various types of automotive lamps, the various regulatory approaches, the notable chronology of technology and technique? Or does it want to be a catalogue? It seems to be leaning in the latter direction, which to me looks potentially problematic; I'm not sure if it violates WP:NOTDIR, but it seems to me that it might. I'm also not sure if it'd necessarily be a good thing for articles like H1 Lamp to proliferate, for the same reason. — Scheinwerfermann ^T· _C05:25, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

My Bosch pocket handbook (packed away till the renovation is done) has more text on the problems of automotive lighting than this article. The problem is, it's very easy to pick up a catalog, type in 20 different catalog numbers, and pat yourself on the back saying "I contributed to the encyclopedia!". It's much more difficult to bestir oneself to the library and check out some dusty tome on automotive engineering that discusses *why* we have different lamps, what the operating differences are that lead to different US and German, British, Japanese...standards, summarize what two or three authorities have said, and so forth. (However, a list of international standards is not an encyclopedia article, either.) This latter, in my opinion, is the only way to write an encyclopedia article and we ought not to allow the parts-catalog and train-spotting lists to be included at all; they are fundamentally trivial, ephemeral, and don't explain anything.

I am in a minority of this view. We have such abominations as List of 7400 series integrated circuits, articles on individiual numbered asteroids ( 7528 Huskvarna being my bête noire; no-one has taken up my suggestions for usefully expanding this article), articles on individual flashlight batteries and cell phones. There's lists of bus-stops, lists of randomly-selected patents, characters from crudely-animated cable TV programs designed for stoners up at 3AM, and way too much on inexplicably popular Japanese pop-culture exports. In spite of not being an indiscriminate collection of information, we have a lot of very sketchy items here.

I dread the arrival of Category:IP-addresses ; after all, an IP address is a useful and notable thing to write about, it's verifiable, and its ever so easy to look up without lifting your butt from the chair behind the keyboard. What if all the DNS servers went down and only Wikipedia survived to allow us to look up IP addresses? What about poor people who don't have access to expensive DNS and use the Wikipedia as their only source of information?

Of three million plus "articles", I wonder how many of them were made by bots and are only edited by bots.

I would like the declaration "Wikipedia is not a parts catalog." said in exactly those words (barring the usual digressive discussions of spelling) in WP:NOT but then even more contributors would drop out when they realize typing in their parts lists won't get them any Wiki-cred. Encyclopedia articles should be concise, thorough and accurate overviews of a topic (well, "accurate" is a loaded term on Wikipedia, we must say "verifiable"), not a blizzard of uncorrelated facts.

Maybe I'll write an essay. People like writing essays, even if they get ignored. -- Wtshymanski ( talk) 13:57, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Well, as I say, I agree with you. You'll note (if you check my user page) I'm officially retired. This what you describe is one of the reasons why. I hope you will write that essay and push for "Wikipedia is not a parts catalog" to be added to WP:NOT. As for the regulatory differences, much of the meat of that matter is covered in Automotive lighting and Headlamp and FMVSS 108 and ECE Regulations and NHTSA. — Scheinwerfermann ^T· _C17:13, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

Since the European standardization was started in 1958, likely many of these lamp types did not exist back then. It would be more encyclopedic for the article to mention when each type was added to the standards. DMahalko ( talk) 02:53, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

More encylopediac, perhaps. Less like a Canadian Tire bulb cross reference guide, though. (Actually, I do CTC an injustice - at least they will tell you what model years have which bulbs, more than you'd get from the article to this point.) -- Wtshymanski ( talk) 04:28, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.