Photo Gallery Streetlights
 Once upon a time, New York City was the
Tale of Two Luminaires. There was a raging war for a full decade
in the 1970's, as high pressure sodium disposed of mercury vapor,
between the main General electric offering, the M400A2 (nicknamed
by me the "Doubtful") and the constipated looking Thomas
Betts standard, the 327 (which I've come to call "Goofy"
although I once labelled them "Dummies"). By the end
of the 1970's, the prior societal standard of "bigger is
better" had gone bye-bye. Everything now had to be comapct
and "lite". Even streetlight fixtures went on diets
and the mini versions of the old faithfuls now began to replace
all the normal size lumes as they died. With Westinghouse pretty
much shut out of the NYC market, not having gotten any new presense
to speak of since the long gone heyday of the OV25 Silverliners,
it looked like a sure bet that the GE-Thomas Betts war would
rage on unabated. The GE troops were led by the venerable M250R
series, while Thomas Betts obviously hoped to cash in with their
tiny variant of the Goofy 327. Fellow light fiends, help me out
here, because for the life of me, I know not the model number.
Anyhow, where the hefty 327 more than held its own in a punishing
war against the M400A2, this forgettable successor just couldn't
hold the line. It developed a significant presense in a number
of neighborhoods, but new entrants from sources hithero way under-represented
in the city began to eat away at its prospects. Not that parent
company Thomas Betts probably cared all that much, because it
was gobbling up most of these second tier manufacturers. Still,
well into the 1980's, GE looked to be on its merry way to redominating
NYC streets as it had so mercilessly managed to do throughout
the 1960's. |
|
The bottom line is that for
all intent and purpose, this luminaire just couldn't live up
to its lofty expectations and GE must've thought the rest of
this century would be a cakewalk. Then came the long awaited
successor to this abject failure; The Thomas Betts 113. The rest
is history folks. The GE M250R's are on life support at this
point and the 113 positively, absolutely rules this town! The closeup shot of the miserable, unidentified underachiever was courtesy of a well placed shorty davit pole illuminating the Van Wyck's 86th Avenue walkbridge. Taken 11/6/99. |