Lightbulb moment

Your article 'Hydrogen hails shipping' (The Big Picture,12 November) has come at the perfect time.

The principles highlight that the future for proper low-energy lighting is obviously LED, and the technology is arriving faster than we thought. (Are you sure 45W for 40km visibility is correct?)

Other references include earlier letters and current advertisement by a well-known powerful torch maker using LED technology.

I am now minded to stock up with the much maligned incandescent lightbulbs until this technology arrives and bypasses the almost useless, high-taxed, slow-warm-up low-energy light bulbs.

Indeed, the radiant warmth from an incandescent while reading allows the house temperature to be lowered, thus saving fuel.

Intermediate technology can be wasteful and expensive. In a similar way one acknowledged those railway companies that saved millions by biding their time and converting direct from steam to electric traction.

PH Field

St Albans, Herts




Re your question on a 45W bulb being visible from 40km, as we say in the article, it is a high-intensity LED — editor