I found this on bulbcollector.com.http://bulbcollector.com/article009.html

Found this also on "lamp tech": https://www.lamptech.co.uk/Documents/Brochures/GE%20-%20D%20Hg%20-%20Brochure%20-%20Cooper-Hewitt%20-%201938%20US.pdf

Back when the lighting industry was actually innovating. That was 150W tubular lamp is really neat, and so is the mercury vapor thing and the water-cooled lamp. I can’t believe they were just introducing a 5W incandescent at that time.

Nowadays, brands just shove color-changing LEDs into everything and call it a day.

Ohh yeahhh! People everywhere have just stopped innovating, it seems. Either we've genuinely plateaued or someone is stifling innovation on purpose.

Sigh.

If you think there is no innovation anymore, you're willfully being ignorant.

We have multi phosphor LEDs with a CRI of 97. Better 5000k lamps than ever were available before. We have light bulbs that reach 210lm/w for where color rendering is not of great importance, at a cost even a private individual can afford them (before, only the biggest low pressure sodium lamps with zero color reproduction were able to get close to that level of efficiency).

We are seeing applications where separate red LED chips are integrated into the same LED component to improve the red reproduction and efficiency of white LEDs - rather than phosphor converting the blue light into red. We have violet pumped LEDs for better blue reproduction. We have moved away from the unreliable capacitive dropper LED drivers (ultra sensitive to voltage peaks) and now have linear and switching regulators that be used with dimmers and are much less sensitive to high frequency spikes on the mains. 

The fact that you don't notice it in DIY stores does not mean there is no innovation. Retail always lags behind professional applications.

Oh my the lamps from lamp-tech look so gorgeous! I wonder what kind of tube they used? A type RF fluorescent?

Incredible... Such gorgeous pieces of handywork aswell, the fixtures just look so beefy, strong, and easy to repair...

Definitely inspires me to build a replica... I actually began working on a early 40's design some time back but the idea got put to the side after the tubes I had planned to use for it never made it... I might revisit that project and instead make it operate some more modern tubes. Would be perfect for my 1800mm 70W tubes. Might be something worth doing