Fluorescent-lamp formats

Systematic nomenclature identifies mass-market lamps as to overall shape, power rating, length, color, and other electrical and illuminating characteristics.

Another example is color matched aperture lights (with about 30° of opening) used in the food industry for robotic quality control inspection of cooked goods.

Aperture lamps were commonly used in photocopiers in the 1960s and 1970s where a bank of fixed tubes was arranged to light up the image to be copied, but are rarely found nowadays.

Aperture lamps can produce a concentrated beam of light suitable for edge-lit signs.

Since about the early to mid-1950s to today, General Electric has developed and improved the Power Groove lamp.

These lamps are recognizable by their large diameter (2+1⁄8 in or 54 mm) and grooved tube shape.

BLB is used for blacklight-blue lamps employing a Wood's glass envelope to filter out most visible light, commonly used in nightclubs.

Designed to run on the existing 125 W (240 V) series ballast but with a different gas fill and operating voltage, the tube operated at only 100 W. Increased efficiency meant that the tube produced only 9% lumen reduction for a 20% power reduction.

However, follow-on retrofit replacements for all the other original T12 tubes were T8, which helped with creating the required electrical characteristics and saving on the then new (and more expensive) polyphosphor/triphosphor coatings, and these were even more efficient.

Running an energy-saving T8 tube with a ballast for T12 will reduce lamp life and can increase energy consumption.

In the 1990s, longer T5 tubes were designed in Europe (making it to North America in the 2000s), in addition to the shorter ones (mentioned above) already in use worldwide.

T5 lamps have a G5 base (bi-pin with 5 mm spacing), even for high-output (HO and VHO) tubes.