@James - even back in 2008, Sylvania listed 13 factory locations! Also, it's nice to see that many of their plants were repurposed instead of demolished, ie, York PA, St Marys, Towanda, etc. I know Wellsboro was partially demolished for whatever reason. It's nice to see Phoenix Investors maintain/market their former facilities instead of letting them fall into disrepair or abandonment, as happened with some of Philips' plants (Bath, NY).

https://web.archive.org/web/20080209143252/http://www.sylvania.com/AboutUs/Careers/Locations/

Update - here are some photos. I meant to get this done before.

Replaced an EOL F20 plant/aquarium lamp (and the starter) in one of my aquarium lights.

Something I noticed was interesting is that in the past 2-3 years it seems like some lamp manufacturers secretly updated some of the older lamps to be triphosphor instead of halophosphate. For example it seems like the later GE F4T5/WW and F4T5/CW lamps are actually /830 and /841 lamps. The ordering code was never updated, but the specs were changed to reflect the higher CRI and lumen output. It's possible some of the other lamp types were secretly updated as well.

@Lcubed3 and @Multisubject - I am referring to the 700 and 800 series lamps that were banned in 2012 for being “too inefficient.” F40T12s are still under manufacture, but the only ones available now are high-CRI ones (either halophosphate deluxe colors or another weird type that I think might be a form of multiphosphor) that are super dim. But that’s what the ban exempted, instead of the nice bright triphosphor 700 and 800 series lamps, we were left with the least efficient, dimmest lamps.

Triphosphor is not the only type of lamp that you can buy today, not by a long shot. In fact, most “old school” lamp sizes (excluding F40T12 and F96T12 of course) are still regular halophosphate to this day, particularly cool white and daylight versions. Warm white versions became triphosphor a few decades ago to achieve better color rendering, but you can still find halophosphate versions from smaller brands.

I have certainly known of your youtube channel after sifting through other lighting channels on youtube.

@Lcubed3
Yes, triphosphor is basically all that is made now. But not T12s, their manufacture has been banned in the US since 2012 if I remember correctly. Old T12 stock remains of course, but no more manufacturing them. Unfortunately in some states you can't even buy the remaining stock because they banned selling T12s too.

What do you mean? Triphosphor tubes are the only kind you can buy right now.

An Ov-50? That’s a good find!

I second Tim. Definitely try it locally if possible—such as OfferUp, Craigslist, Marketplace. I’ve seen an OV-50 pop up in my region way back when doing that.