Backers Shed Light on ‘E-Lamp’ Bulb : Technology: Some call the creation the biggest advance in lighting since fluorescents were introduced in the 1930s.

Like many overnight sensations, the “E-Lamp”--a revolutionary light bulb that its developers say will last for years and use just one-quarter the electricity required by existing bulbs--spent years flickering in obscurity before flashing onto the scene over the weekend.

“We’ve been pushing this rock uphill for a lot of years,” said Don Pezzolo, whose Sunnyvale, Calif., product-engineering company developed the “electronic light” technology.

Pezzolo’s company is Diablo Research Corp., which has also devised security systems and light timers for companies such as Black & Decker, General Electric and International Business Machines. With 16 engineers working out of 30,000 square feet of office and laboratory space in Sunnyvale, Diablo is in the final stages of developing the new screw-in bulb. It has licensed the technology to Intersource Technologies, another Silicon Valley company that hopes to bring the product to market next year.

Pezzolo and Pierre G. Villere, chief executive of Intersource, spent an exhausting but exhilarating Monday in Columbus, Ohio, at the annual meeting of the Edison Electric Institute, a trade group of investor-owned utilities, where they formally announced the breakthrough.

While showing off their technology to dozens of television cameras and potential customers, the two fielded phone calls from the press and would-be investors excited about getting in on the ground floor of a technology touted as the biggest advance in lighting since the development of fluorescent bulbs in the 1930s.

Unlike conventional incandescent and fluorescent lights, the E-Lamp has no filament and therefore would not be subject to the burnout that dims most bulbs these days. Rather, a magnetic coil--think of it as a small radio antenna--inside a gas-filled globe generates high-frequency radio waves that cause the gas to give off a bluish glow. That glow in turn strikes a white phosphor coating on the inside of the bulb, which then glows with visible light.

If used four hours a day, Intersource said, the bulb would be expected to last about 14 years. A 25-watt E-Lamp would run about $15, comparable to the cost of the bulkier, energy-saving compact fluorescent bulbs available today. A standard 100-watt incandescent bulb costing 75 cents lasts less than a year.

Assuming that Intersource can raise the tens of million of dollars needed to bring its products to market--a task that could be made easier by the recent media attention--it plans initially to make two types of bulbs. One would be for use in recessed ceiling fixtures and the other would be for table and floor lamps.

Pezzolo and Villere (rhymes with Hilary) typify the engineer/fund-raiser partnerships that are so prevalent in Silicon Valley.

Pezzolo--who as an engineer at Fairchild Semiconductor developed an ignition system for General Motors in the 1970s--got involved with E-Lamp technology in 1978 when he was hired as a consultant by its inventor, a physicist named Don Hollister. Over the next few years, Hollister sold the technology to investors who funded further research.

In the late 1980s, when the investors got discouraged by what they saw as a lack of market interest, Diablo Research bought the technology. Pezzolo, 49, said his fast-growing, privately held company has since funded the project’s development with retained earnings.

“We felt strongly the market would exist,” Pezzolo said Monday.

Villere, who turned 40 two weeks ago, was a real estate developer in the 1970s and 1980s who, as he put it, got “beaten up” by the oil and gas recession in the Louisiana, Texas and Oklahoma. During that time, he said, he picked up some tips about fixing troubled companies.

In 1988, he came to California to help a company that was having technical trouble developing a new technology for neon signs. Villere sought out Diablo for its engineering expertise. But when Pezzolo pulled out an old brown valise containing pieces of its E-Lamp, Villere said he was “flabbergasted” by the technology’s potential.

“I sat on his doorstep until he gave us a license,” Villere said. Villere then went in search of investment funds, making hundreds of presentations to Wall Street investment banks and utilities. But the timing was unfortunate. That was in 1990, just before Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and the start of the Gulf War. After the war, he finally was able to nail down a deal with American Electric Power Co., the huge Columbus, Ohio, utility that, in exchange for 9.9% of Intersource, is backing the final stage of development with $6.5 million.

Villere, who is now based in his hometown, New Orleans, but flies 300,000 miles a year trying to drum up interest in the E-Lamp, said Monday that the company will need an additional $50 million over the next five years to support its growth and start-up manufacturing costs.

Nicholas A. Godley, chief financial officer at Intersource, said the next round of financing is expected to come from utilities. The company got a boost from the signing of a joint venture agreement with MagneTek, a big Los Angeles distributor of lighting products.

Despite all the hoopla surrounding their product, the staff at Diablo Research is keeping a low profile, Pezzolo said. “You probably won’t find a famous person among us,” he said. “And they’re hoping they won’t (become famous). It’s too disruptive.”