Identifications and limited spectroscopy for Luyten common proper motion stars with probable white dwarf components. I - Pair brighter than 17th magnitude
Identifications are provided for 103 bright Luyten common proper motion (CPM) stellar systems with m(pg) less than 17.0 mag containing likely white dwarf (WD) components. New spectral types are presented for 55 components, and spectral types for 51 more are available in the literature. With the CPM systems previously published by Giclas et al. (1978), the Luyten stars provide a uniform sample of nearly 200 pairs or multiples brighter than 17h magnitude. Selection effects biasing the combined samples are discussed; in particular, evidence is presented that fewer than 1 percent of wide WD binaries have been detected.