Trying to understand this Cibie brochure from 1985...

[Mölyapina]

I found this .pdf of a Cibie brochure from 1985, and was reading through it. One confusing thing was this diagram I found on page six:

It seems to imply that even the standard rectangular high beams have a beam that reaches out 4750 ft, yet when I look at the Hella Rallye 4000 Xenon HID pencil beam beam pattern below...

EDIT: They look to have numbers for "round", "rectangular", and "standard" lights. The "standard" ones are more along the lines of what I would have expected, even though they are still a touch long.

...I see that it appears to only reach out 4230 feet. It doesn't make any sense to me that a standard Cibie high beam would reach out further than the Rallye 4000. What's going on? Are two different standards of beam length being used?

 

[-Virgil-]

There are a lot of whoppers in that catalog. Page 2 "Lenses molded from the finest lead crystal". No, that's not true and it never has been. Those lenses are soda-lime glass. "Heat compensating bulb holders" Nope. "Shock resistant housings protect the balance between bulb, reflector and lens crucial to optimum light output" doesn't mean anything. Page 4 "there are no standards for measuring candlepower. No one has determined whether to take the measurement at six inches or six feet." Wrong. "candlepower does not rate a complete lamp, merely the light source." No, it can be used for either job. Page 7, talking about H4 headlamps "Each light is designed so the transition from light to dark is so gradual that it appears to disappear at infinity" Wrong, that's the opposite of what defines the low beam pattern of the lamps being referred to. They have a sharp cutoff, that is a short/fast transition from light to dark, not a "so gradual" one.

As for the chart on page 6: All the distances are grossly overstated and none of them have any relation to reality. Standard low beam 800 feet, 950 feet? Cibie low beam 1300 feet, 1400 feet, 950 feet? Baloney, baloney, baloney. These numbers are randomly made up.

 

[Mölyapina]

All right, that makes me feel better about my intuition, then.

I wonder where the whole thing originated. Who printed the brochure? Would Cibie print that sort of crap? The company and address on the bottom of the last page of the brochure only leads to one relevant Google result, which a response letter from the NHSTA to a Mr. H. J. T. Young, the Vice President - Technical Affairs at the SEV Corporation. I wonder if they were an importer for Cibie or something like that.

 

[-Virgil-]

I wonder where the whole thing originated.

In the imagination of one or another American over the years who had the Cibie lighting distributorship on this continent. There were several, including the HJT Young guy you cite. The whoppers and baloney grew in size and number when Wagner (the cheap sealed beam people) had the Cibie distributorship after HJT Young called it quits.

Would Cibie print that sort of crap?

Cibie is a brand, not a person or a company.