Wonder if this predates Philips CDM-T and if Philips actually copied this design?

Thorn and Osram's single ended lamps predate Philip's CDM by a number of years.

Awesome little lamp and crystal clear image! Canon 7D? GE pillaged Thorn's years of hard work and superb R&D in a matter of months.

EOS 70D with a Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8. It'll be getting replaced by the new 5D when it comes out.

I've got a 5s to be replaced by a 7 when it comes out? Maybe GE taking over thorn was a good thing as thorn went on a quality note it would of been sad seeing all thorns products go to China one by one or the quality becoming utter shit?

It does pre-date CDM by almost a decade. Thorn and Osram jointly developed this Arcstream lamp and Osram's HQI-T around 1985, with sales properly starting a year or two later. That really put Philips out in the cold in terms of metal halide technology. Even back then Philips was developing ceramic but they thought they were much closer to commercialisation than they really were. About 1988 Philips fully developed a copy of this lamp, the MHW-T, I will upload a photo later, but it was never really launched because they knew ceramic was coming and would be better. It was a painful few years for Philips until CDM was finally ready in 1995, and they could at last begin getting into the lucrative new market of metal halide for accent and display shoplighting. Good note Kev, indeed it would have really been sad to see the little Thorn company's excellence being picked away by the cost accountants, if GE had not taken them over that would have happened many years earlier. GE gave the Thorn operations a good 15 years longer than they would have otherwise enjoyed.

I think I read somewhere that for a time, the Hungarian GE CDM lamps had UK-made arc tubes in them? That right?

Interesting that thorn lamps were so badly in the shit James! They were so big it's hard to imagine them getting in trouble financially!

Interestingly, the electrode tips on these, (the tiny ball and the bend), completely burn away when run to their total life!, but they still light!, albeit with a heavy colour change.

Its a bit crap that they only have a 5,000h life span?