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Did Tesla invent the fluorescent light?

While Tesla experimented with what he called "phosphorescent" lamps, it was French physicist Alexandre-Edmond Becquerel (1820-1891) who first conceived the idea of placing a fluorescent coating on the inner surface of a high voltage gas discharge tube.  Tesla's investigations in the area of high-voltage RF power processing techniques did result in the very first high efficiency, high frequency lighting ballasts.  His seminal lectures on the topic of high frequency lighting are, "Experiments With Alternate Currents of Very High Frequency and Their Application to Methods of Artificial Illumination," "Experiments with Alternating Currents of High Potential and High Frequency" and "On Light and Other High Frequency Phenomena" all to be found in the book Inventions, Researches and Writings of Nikola Tesla.  It's interesting to note that the world's first commercial fluorescent lamps, introduced by the Westinghouse Electric Company at the 1939 New York World's Fair, were of the low-voltage 50-60 Hz hot cathode type still in common use today.  Only since the late 1980s have more efficient high-frequency ballasts—some with great similarities to those developed by Tesla over 100 years ago—begun to gain wider acceptance.

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