The first commercial high-pressure sodium lamps were available in 1965 from companies in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands at introduction a 400 watt lamp would produce around 100 lumens per watt. This problem was solved by Michael Arendash at the GE Nela Park plant. The end caps of the arc tube would get as hot as 800 degrees C in operation, then cool to room temperature when the lamp was turned off, so the electrode terminations and arc tube seal had to tolerate repeated temperature cycles. The material was available in the form of tubing by 1962, but additional techniques were required to seal the tubes and add the necessary electrodes-the material could not be fused like quartz. The development by General Electric of a sintered aluminum oxide material (with magnesium oxide added to improve light transmission) was an important step in construction of a commercial lamp. A laboratory demonstration of a high pressure lamp was carried out in 1959. The quartz material used in mercury discharge lamps was corroded by high pressure sodium vapor. Increasing the pressure of the sodium vapor broadened the sodium emission spectrum so that the light produced had more energy emitted at wavelengths above and below the 589 nm region.

Research into high-pressure sodium lamps occurred in both the United Kingdom and the United States. The yellow light produced by these limited the range of applications to those where color vision was not required.

These operated at pressures of less than 1 Pa and produced a near monochromatic light spectrum around the sodium emission lines at 589.0 and 589.56 nanometres wavelength. The low-pressure sodium arc discharge lamp was first made practical around 1920 owing to the development of a type of glass that could resist the corrosive effects of sodium vapor. They include the sodium-vapor lamp that is the gas-discharge lamp in street lighting. Single ended self-starting lamps are insulated with a mica disc and contained in a borosilicate glass gas discharge tube (arc tube) and a metal cap. Low-pressure sodium lamps only give monochromatic yellow light and so inhibit color vision at night.

High-pressure sodium lamps emit a broader spectrum of light than the low-pressure lamps, but they still have poorer color rendering than other types of lamps. Low-pressure sodium lamps are highly efficient electrical light sources, but their yellow light restricts applications to outdoor lighting, such as street lamps, where they are widely used. Two varieties of such lamps exist: low pressure and high pressure. A sodium-vapor lamp is a gas-discharge lamp that uses sodium in an excited state to produce light at a characteristic wavelength near 589 nm.

Sodium element wavelength