{"id":791,"date":"2009-02-01T23:11:34","date_gmt":"2009-02-01T23:11:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=791"},"modified":"2009-02-01T23:11:34","modified_gmt":"2009-02-01T23:11:34","slug":"daily-mail-admits-existence-of-new-technology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=791","title":{"rendered":"Daily Mail Admits Existence Of New Technology"},"content":{"rendered":"

Following on from the Mail’s highly embarrassing crusade to prevent energy-inefficient and environment-destroying incandescent bulbs from being phased out<\/a> (and all because of those damned\u00a0Johnny Foreigners in the EU. Eh. What), it reported this week that a bulb costing only \u00a32 with a life expectancy of 60 years<\/a> had been developed.<\/p>\n

A\u00a0lighting revolution is on the way that could end at the flick of a switch the battle between supporters of conventional bulbs and the eco-friendly variety.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It goes on to describe this ‘brand new’ invention:<\/p>\n

Cambridge University researchers have developed cheap, light-emitting diode (LED) bulbs that produce brilliant light but use very little electricity. They will cost \u00a32 and last up to 60 years.<\/p>\n

Despite being smaller than a penny, they are 12 times more efficient than conventional tungsten bulbs and three times more efficient than the unpopular fluorescent low-energy versions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Erm, Mail-guys! They may cost \u00a32 each, but a typical usable light bulb will need perhaps 5-10 of them inside. So your later comment involves a little bit of misunderstanding:<\/p>\n

But until now the production costs have been too expensive for widespread use because the material had to be ‘grown’ on sapphire wafers, meaning a single household bulb would have cost \u00a320.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A household bulb using these LEDs will still cost anywhere between \u00a310-20, depending on how many LEDs it has inside. And the Maplin LED Strip I mentioned in the original story only costs \u00a319 and has 36 ultra-bright\u00a0LEDs on it (that’s about 53p per LED, Mail-guys!)<\/p>\n

\"Maplin

Maplin LED Light Strip – type 1<\/p><\/div>\n

I suspect the Mail is trying (very badly) to dig itself out of the huge hole it dug over that free lightbulb offer to its crusty, middle-England readership – who, incidentally, are still flooding this site with hits based on the search term ‘Daily Mail free lightbulb offer’.<\/p>\n

Of course, we mustn’t lose sight of the fact that high-brightness LEDs have been around since at least 2007 . No, wait! Maybe since 2005\u00a0(and<\/strong><\/em> they’re made of Gallium Nitride – the same Philosopher’s Stone the Mail claims this fantastic new discovery is fashioned from). The Mail’s journo’s are a real joke sometimes – they can’t research any science story properly.<\/p>\n

The cost of high-brightness LEDs will come down – everyone knows that. It’s just a shame that the kind of people who would happily sacrifice the planet to prevent the EU telling them what to do can’t get it into their heads that even now \u00a320-30 for a bulb which never wears out and uses a fraction of the power\u00a0is better than paying 70p repeatedly for something which breaks every few months and costs a fortune to run by comparison.<\/p>\n

But that’s the typical Daily Mail reader for you. It’s no wonder we’re still stuck with a nonsensical Imperial measuring system and Sterling when metric and the Euro are just sitting there begging to be used.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Following on from the Mail’s highly embarrassing crusade to prevent energy-inefficient and environment-destroying incandescent bulbs from being phased out (and all because of those damned\u00a0Johnny Foreigners in the EU. Eh. What), it reported this week that a bulb costing only \u00a32 with a life expectancy of 60 years had been developed. A\u00a0lighting revolution is on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[121],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latestposts"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t