Strobe light

A strobe light is a device built to produce regular flashes of light, its name coming from the Ancient Greek word for the act of whirling. Most strobe lights use a xenon flash lamp powered by a capacitor that charges to roughly 300 volts and then discharges through the gas filled tube, producing a very bright, brief plasma flash, with commercial units typically releasing 10 to 150 joules of energy in discharges lasting only milliseconds but drawing several kilowatts of power. The engineer Harold Eugene Doc Edgerton developed strobe lighting in 1931 as an improved stroboscope for studying fast moving objects, later using it to capture dramatic photographs such as a bullet caught in flight. Strobe lights now serve many purposes, including anti collision lighting on aircraft and tall structures, emergency vehicle lights and alarms, simulated lightning in theatrical productions, measuring the speed of rotating machinery, underwater signaling for scuba divers, and entertainment lighting in nightclubs, a use that became especially popular in the 1960s club scene.