H1 bulbs

[Roger M. Woodbury]

Well, it just shows you what I know.  Twenty years ago, or so, I had a hobby
business selling sports car and european car headlights.  I had been
involved with a supplier from Wisconsin who was an lighting engineer who
distributed such lights for a living.  He told me that the H1 bulb would be
replaced by the H3 and H2, and others by the end of the eighties, in his
opinion, and the H4 bulb would become THE bulb for headlamp illumination for
the forseeable future.

With the projector headlamps, and the "free form" shapes, I sort of assumed
that had all happened, and now, all of the halogen lamps eventually will go
the "way of all flesh" with the advent of Zenon and HID technologies on
line, and appearing in the marketplace.  That the venerable H1 bulb still
exists and is in some use, gives me hope that normal, mortal headlighting
may remain possible for a while anyway.

I don't know how many reading this read the piece in Christophorus a while
back about the headlamp development for Porsche's new 911, but it made me
wonder what the cost of replacing one of those things if it was assaulted by
a 2 1/2 inch stone bouncing off a gravel truck on the highway.  In 1991, I
drove a diesel Rabbit for a year or two, and I had installed 7" rectangular
European lamps in that car.  One early spring morning, I was driving down US
Route 1 heading east, when a large wheeler pulled out onto the road in front
of me.  The road was still frost heaved in that area, and the truck bounced
over a rough place, causing several clods of mud to fall off the tailgate.

We werent' going very fast...certainly not close to the 55 mile per hour
speed limit...and I sat behind my Rabbit wheel mesmerized, while not one but
two golf ball sized stones bounced toward me just as though they had been
sent on their way by a crazed golfer (or perhaps President Ford!).  Anyway,
I was able to tap my brakes and the rocks didn't hit the windshield....but
just went "clunk" into BOTH headlamps.  When I stopped the car and got
around to the front to inspect the damage, the two rocks were still there.

I called the sand and gravel company, and they said to send them the bill,
which I did.  But in a new Porsche, I wonder how they would haave liked to
receive a bill for the gazillion dollars that one of those headlamps must
cost?

Roger