20th Century Inventors:
Tungsten Halogen Lamp
Photo of Elmer Fridrich, 1959.
© General Electric
Elmer G. Fridrich, 1959
co-holder of U.S. Patent #2,883,571
"Some people said it had been tried - putting halogens in lamps - but it didn't work. My opinion was that halogen had not been tried in this particular configuration, with a material - quartz - that was capable of going to much higher temperatures."
-- Elmer Fridrich, 1996 interview
The research that led to tungsten halogen lamps began as a search at General Electric for a compact heat-lamp. Around 1950, incandescent heat-lamps were large, bulky devices which required large, bulky fixtures. A Nela Park team led by Alton Foote hoped to make much smaller heat-lamps using quartz, which, as Fridrich noted above, can withstand much higher temperatures than ordinary glass.