СССР

The light bulb is designed for cars. It still works. On every USSR bulb there was gray base which isn't polished, date codes are marked with arabic and roman numbers.

Here is my 2nd Soviet 40W lamp. I got it for free with 6 Elektroimpex tubes. I drove it with these 6 tubes on my bike and they survived the ride. The markings on the flask are worn out and barely noticeable. Nice tube.

This is one of my favorite tubes. It's very durable and you can see that it worked a lot, but here's the miracle: it still turns on fine, gives a lot of light, and colors are clearly visible.

The picture shows a very famous Soviet lamp. I found a new one on the internet with a couple of other fluorescent lamps. The phosphor on the lamp is grainy, the electrodes are not parallel, one is horizontal, the other is vertical, the color is even and pleasant. I am satisfied.

Illustrated here is an unusual Russian low pressure sodium lamp, manufactured by MELZ in 1966. The discharge tube has a U-shape, and it is assembled within an outer vacuum flask. Normally on European lamps it is possible to remove the discharge tube and replace that while re-using the outer vacuum flask, but on this Russian lamp it has been assembled with a powerful spring which is almost impossible to remove. Clearly it was the intention to replace the whole lamp when the discharge tube failed.

Not much information is known about this unusual Russian lamp, type FB-3000, presumably 3000 Watts. I believe the manufacturer is Stella of Moscow, who is still producing special Xenon lamps today, however the logo of the modern company is slightly different than what is printed on this lamp. It appears to be an electrodeless lamp for microwave frequency operation. The bulb is made ​​in thick quartz glass and contains a quartz spiral coated with white material, possibly a heat-resistant light reflecting coating.