The Brightest Ideas Yet

Modern headlamps are slim and compact, yet use advanced lighting and reflector technology to produce extremely powerful illumination.

- Jake Venter

Over the last couple of decades, motor manufacturers have focused strongly on decreasing the drag coefficient of their vehicles. One of the results of this design imperative has been the demand for smaller, sleeker headlamps. By intensively studying the various ways that light can be projected, the major headlamp manufacturers have met the challenge of providing better headlights while using unusual reflector shapes.

The first change occurred when more rectangular shapes were introduced. Some of these units, called bifocal paraboloids, used a stepped reflector with two paraboloidal sections of different focal lengths, but a common focal point. Focal points have also differed, as in the headlamp on the 1999 S-Class Mercedes-Benz, which has three paraboloids, each with a bulb at its own focal point, and each with a lens that distributes the light according to whether it is a high beam, low beam or fog light.