60 MAY / JUNE 2022 popularmechanics.co.zaTHIS CHANGED EVERYTHING
/ BY BRENT ROSE /The smart bulb
that gave light
a new purpose
B
EING ABLE TO CHANGE THE ENTIRE LOOK
and feel of a room with the press of a button
or a quick voice command is one of those rare
things that makes you feel like you’re living in
the future. Colour-changing lights have existed
for years, but never in a form that was useful.
They were typically big, clunky fixtures that
you had to plug into a wall, took up valuable shelf space,
and required a remote to control. They certainly weren’t
elegant – mere novelty items at best.Plain white LED bulbs had an equally rocky start. By the
end of the 2000s, you could replace a standard incandescent
bulb with one, but they were still generally ugly, with
bizarre fins around the bases, and they often cast an
unpleasant shade of light. That left room for the
development of LED bulbs that weren’t eyesores and
produced light that was more pleasing and useful. In
2011, a team at Philips had the idea of a bulb that could
address several of those issues while providing some
health benefits. But they ended up with something
far more versatile, creating colour-changing lighting that
didn’t require a specialised gadget.
‘When we started the design of Philips Hue, we were
going for tunable whites,’ says George Yianni, head of
tech for Philips Hue and the person who originally
conceived the project. ‘We were aiming for something that
could go from warm whites to cold whites.’ The benefitsThe Philips Hue
bulb as it looks
today – not
much different
from its original
debut LED form
in 2011.