In this installment of 10 Questions for . . . , Associate Editor Kimberly Janeway speaks with Ed Hammer about his 1975 invention, the compact fluorescent lightbulb, and why it took so long for this innovation to reach the marketplace. Hammer (shown with the first CFL) has worked in the lighting industry for 50 years and holds more than 40 patents.

How do you feel about being called the father of the CFL? And does Edison inspire or haunt you?
"Father of the CFL" is a nice title—I'm fine with that. I wasn't haunted by Edison. I wanted to make the world a better place; it's still my goal.

What led to your invention?
I was a senior physicist at GE Lighting in Cleveland and was working in fluorescent lighting in 1973, when we had the energy crisis in this country. As a result, we designed a bulb commonly called the F-40 Watt-Miser, the first energy-efficient linear fluorescent lamp. That said, I thought we might as well get a replacement for the 100-watt incandescent lamp. That type of lighting is very, very inefficient.

What did you envision as a replacement for incandescent bulbs?
I thought if we could get a fluorescent replacement, we'd get more efficient lighting. I was also thinking compact and to get it to look like an incandescent I would make it spiral and bend it with certain geometry, but it wouldn't be easy. My colleagues gave me many reasons why it wouldn't work.

From conception to prototype took up to two years, and my first compact fluorescent lightbulb was good. It's on display at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. Today's spirals look very similar to the first one.

You invented the CFL in 1975. Why did it take so long for it to reach stores?
A number of reasons. There wasn't enough money for GE to do the CFL. It got delayed. Time goes on and there were other projects. In 1985 we tried to do the CFL, but bending it was very difficult because there wasn't automated equipment. GE thought the CFL was a good bulb but too expensive to make. The bending was done manually and the other parts were automated. The only place in the world where CFLs could be made and sold at a reasonable price was China. In the end, GE wasn't the first to bring CFLs to market.

Were there any problems with the first CFLs?
One big problem was that they operated with a high-frequency electronic ballast. People complained they were having problems with their TVs and they'd take them back to the store. The output frequency of the CFLs was the same as the frequency from the televisions and was causing interference. Once we identified the frequencies being used, the remote-control people designed around it. Interference is no longer a problem, but that slowed down sales of CFLs.