The new Westinghouse used to make a line of compact fluorescent globe lamps with miniature electronic ballast in base of bulb. These came in various sized globes like G40 and G25. They were waterproof, so they could be used in light strings. They came in multiple colors in addition to white. They were sold under the Westinghouse Nanolux name.
I am a bulb collector and gave a bunch of these myself. They are based on neon and argon glow lamps. Some use argon and an actual phosphor. Like blue and green, and some use neon and Penning gas (blend of neon and argon) to produce the warner colors, and the simple gas discharge and color of the gas glow itself with simple silica powder that us not a phosphor, but a mere light diffuser as was also in soft white incandescent bulbs, was used, so some were legit fluorescent and some were just glow lamps and not fluorescent at all. These lamps each have a carbon resistor in the base which is the ballast and 2 surface glow electrodes. Please note that the blue lamps tend to both dim and have shorter actual life than other lamps in the set because the phosphor degrades fast and the argon gas has larger molecules than neon and hit the electron emission material on the electrodes, destroying it faster than in neon lamps. The Penning gas also does this though less aggressively. The blues dim then fail first, then the greens as they have pure argon as well, next are the non fluorescent Penning gas filled lamps, and longest lasting are the pure neon gas on fluorescent types. Sylvania also developed newer fluorescent phosphors so were instrumental in advancing the development of fluorescent lamp technology. These are a neat item and were made mainly to promote use of fluorescent lighting. I actually have a 1938 Westinghouse MAZDA 15 watt T12 BLUE new old stock, then made by GE for them because Westinghouse wasn’t tooled up to make fluorescent lamps until spring 1939! It was displayed at the 1939 Worlds fair in NY and came with a special built desk lamp I restored, so fluorescent is my favorite lamp to collect along with mercury vapor. Cheers! 👍🏻😋
guy says super rare in the thumbnail, yet proceeds to have 12 different sets! I bow to you! I collect soviet Christmas lights in general, and the rarest one was 60s to 70s "Shishka" or pinecone, made from colored abs plastic, with a shape and texture of a pinecone, with a 12 volt little lamp inside. The OG ones were made from five colors, orange, red, burgundy, blue and green, then quickly later became just yellow green red and blue, so finding the OG sets is next to impossible, yet I have found three already. One absolutely NOS and it is super vibrant.
Beautiful lights. Christmas is a very bittersweet time for me, and I long for the days when I would have jumped through hoops of fire for a set of these fluorescent lights.
I have a ton of florescent Christmas lights I have purchased in estate sales over the years. I ran across some when getting some spare bulbs out for the outdoor C9 lights I put up yesterday. I set a few aside to put on the Christmas tree the I put it up in a few days. I haven't used them in years..... You have a nice collection of them.
I’m going on 74 years old I have a collective Lightbulb since I was six fluorescent lightbulbs since I was 19 and I’m not stopping now I don’t know what you’re talking about and I have a lot of cool stuff merry Christmas
I agree. My family always had bubble lights. I've used them for 50 years myself. I just bought 3 new strings. I'm always afraid they'll quit making them, so I buy a few strings every few years to be safe. Can't imagine a tree without them. Wish they'd make the pink tubes again. My Mother had some when I was little.
The fact that there was a connection between the set and someone's memories blows my mind. I wish I could know the history of my antique Christmas lights or vinyl records, before being bought by me, as a teenager in the 2000s
I have a set of these florescent bulbs that was used on the small tree set up in my mother's room at the hospital where I was born just before Christmas in 1945. My father (still in the Army) took photos. They worked for our daughter's first Christmas in 1991. Who knows how long they can last?
We had a couple of complete sets of these back in the 70s, we never used them because they weren’t as bright. They still were in their boxes in my mother’s basement up until a few years ago. She had her basement “cleaned” and a lot of stuff wasn’t around anymore.
Mom and dad had a set of those. They were weird looking. Unfortunately, mom threw out all our old Christmas decorations. By the time I found out everything was long gone. I don't miss those lights so much, but there were some other decorations that I'd really love to have.
@@theantiquefanatic Well, yes. But really it's a small thing. They left me much more important things - a good moral foundation, work ethic, many good memories, as well as physical things. But if I could have one thing from those Christmases decorations it would be the felt cloth that was always under the tree and that was probably as much cat hair as it was felt in the later years :)
So beautiful.. That's why i love lights from 40s to 90s because set of light wires are longer than new light wires today because today light wires are short. Ugh
My mom had some glass ornaments she got from my grandmother from the WWII era and what was historically special about them was that they had paper tabs that went inside them to put the hooks through because of the metal rationing at the time!
I love everything about this. You look like a long lost brother, but you have the dulcet tones of one from Alachua County. I want you to read me a bed time story.
...I'm 75...we had these lights when I was growing up in the 50s & 60s...as well ads what were prolly 30s/40s era Noma incandescent lights...mom & dad never bought any new lights until the late 60s or very early 70s...all of our fluorescent lights were pastel colors..
My set was purchased in about '45 or so, by my Grandmother who was working at a drugstore at the time. She saved up for 6 weeks to buy them, even at store discount. I cant recall what she paid, but for 6 weeks wages, they must have been absurdly expensive.
Our entire tree has about 150 fluorescents and c-6 bubbler / figural/ and other miscellaneous lamps. I’ve taken 2 eight socket c-6 sets and made them a set of 16. Bulbs last much longer and complements the same glow as the fluorescents
Interesting to me is that there's no obvious ballast. I wonder if these bulbs use a resistor current limiter in each bulb, like a small neon nightlight. I also wonder how much power they draw.
Same here. I was hoping for a technical teardown because I have no clue how these would start up. They need a high voltage spike to light up so how did they do it?
Some are neon bulbs with a silica “soft white” diffusing coating instead of a phosphor. The green and blue are real fluorescent lamps and use argon to make some short wave UV to excite it.
When I was young I had some fluorescent type lamps that were the diameter of a shaprie and about 1.5 inches tall. I lost them when my parents sold our house. Does anyone know what these were? They looked like mini candles.
Technically speaking, there is a big difference. In a neon light, an electric current passing through neon gas, causes the gas in the tube to produce visible light. In the case of neon gas, that gas can only produce red-orange light and a different gas would be needed in each bulb to produce different colors of light. A fluorescent light bulb is entirely different, all fluorescent lights have mercury vapor inside the bulb (or tube) and an electric current passing through the mercury vapor generates invisible ultraviolet light. This invisible ultraviolet light then strikes a fluorescent coating on the inside of the bulb and this coating is then stimulated by the UV light to re-radiate a specific color of visible light, depending on the type of fluorescent coating used. He mentions this coating in the video, so we know that these are indeed fluorescent bulbs and not neon bulbs, plus if they were all actually neon bulbs, then they would all be orange-yellow when they lit up. @@theantiquefanatic
Because it was a selling point in the early days of fluorescent. Only the green and blue actually use a phosphor that glows, the others use neon or penning gas (neon/argon mix) and are merely neon glow lamps with silica powder same as soft white incandescent and now filament LED bulbs.
I wonder if these were used commercially? I recall several small towns that the mainstreet was maybe five blocks long or so. There would be a string of bulbs across the street, usually strung from one building to the next, maybe every 20 feet or so. These would be left year round but only turned on at Christmas.
@@southernguy35 I have another set that is round but incandescent and much thicker cord. More likely that these were used in the scenario you’re describing. The fluorescent ones were for indoor use only.
My Grandfather would tell me about when he was a kid. Having a tree with actual candles on it... Small tree 3-4 feet tall with maybe 12 candles attached with wire holders. Light the candles and sing a couple songs then put the candles out right away and have a bucket of water handy.... I would not recommend doing this.
In Sweden, many of our friends still decorated their trees with wax candles in the nineties. Then those multi-coloured, cheap Taiwanese string sets flooded the market and became a must-have. Candles were pretty and actually safe too, but you obviously had to keep an eye on them 😊
@@theantiquefanatic My understanding is they stopped production of the F90T17 lamps. Remaining lamps (if you can find them) are as high as $200 each. Also stopped production of SOX lamps in 2017. Remaining stock is $50+
@@benjaminvella2736 You’re right! They are not easy to find for sure. We’ll discuss that one day soon on a future episode of The Antique FANatic! Stay tuned!!
@@benjaminvella2736as far as I'm aware, GE was the last manufacturer of T-17's. This includes the F90T17, F40T17 / IS, F48PG17, F72PG17 & F96PG17 lamps. Ironically the power groove lamps were only produced by General Electric and the F96PG17 was among the brightest fluorescent tubes ever produced, but operates at 1500mA, so they were interchangeable with VHO lamps and used the same ballast. VHO lamps were made until very recently and they are still available on some websites for a premium price. If I'm not mistaken the F90T17 lamp is a preheat lamp (requires a starter) but operates at 1500mA and first made in the early 1940s for use in WWII manufacturing facilities, making them an early prototype of the VHO lamps which are rapid start and first made in the 1950s to take the place of the F90T17. The F40T17/IS lamp was first made in the 1950s. It looks identical to the F90T17 but is an instant start and not electrically interchangeable, for the pins are shunted inside the end caps making this in effect, a single pin base lamp, and is used on an instant start ballast suitable for F40T17/IS, F40T12/IS and F48T12 lamps. This is a low glare lamp and the most common applications were in classrooms, child care centers / nurseries, libraries and similar areas with exposed lamps and soft glare free lighting is desired while providing the same lumens as standard 40 watt 48 inch T12 lamps. Philips - Westinghouse discontinued T17 lamps sometime in the 1980s or late '70s, and Sylvania discontinued T17 lamps sometime around 1993, when GTE got out of the lighting business and Osram took over. Today as far as I'm aware, the only T17 lamps still in production are the induction lamps used in highway and parking lot fixtures where extreme long life and efficiency are most important.
I remember Christmas lights when I was a young kid got so hot that they would blister your fingers. All you smelled was the tree being cooked! Do these get hot too?
And they were series lights. If one went out, the whole string went out. One Christmas my mother bought plastic snow and threw it all over our tree. It melted all over those hot lights and we never could get it off the bulbs.
I'm 81 years old and I vividly remember helping Mom string incandescent Christmas lights on our Christmas tree following the end of WWII, but I never heard of fluorescent Christmas lights until seeing your video. Believe me when I say I definitely would have noticed the difference between fluorescent and incandescent blubs back in the nineteen forties. I gave you a thumbs up for telling me something I never knew, but I almost took it back because of that terrible music you played in the middle of the video, although I realize that people today might actually like that awful sound. It's too bad you don't have more of a technical background, because I'd like to know more about how those lights worked. Fluorescent lights of that period need a ballast to raise voltage and limit current, and also a timed starter-heater to vaporize the mercury in the bulbs. These electrical items were too large to fit inside of each Christmas light in those days, so I wonder how Sylvania was able to solve those problems. Decades later, companies were able to eliminate the starter-heater and squeeze a ballast into the base of compact fluorescent bulbs, but I'm assuming that these old Christmas lights were much smaller than the CFLs which came much later. Was there possibly a box that sat on the floor, which may have held a ballast for the entire light string? Given the technology of the nineteen forties, the ballast would probably have weighed at least a pound and probably more.
No actually there is nothing but the bulb. The string is just an average c-7 light string. Not sure how all that works without ballasts and starters. Unless it’s at the base of the bulb.
Regarding the last part of your comment: The starter cans used in fluorescent lights in the nineteen forties were larger than the base of the bulbs you show in your video. And, the ballasts used in fluorescent light fixtures in those days consisted of an iron core transformer and choke, which would never fit in the base of your bulbs. The puzzle of how these bulbs worked piqued my interest, so I decided to do a search for the original patent and find out how they were able to eliminate key parts of a fluorescent light. I believe I found the original patent that was assigned to Sylvania. It's patent number 2,421,571, and it turns out that these Christmas lights had more in common with neon glow lights than with the fluorescent lights of the day. The key to eliminating the starter and heavy ballast was in the fact that these bulbs were only 5 Watts each, and their small physical size allowed the electrodes to be placed close together, eliminating the need to heat the bulb, or raise the voltage above 110 VAC. The low wattage made it possible to replace the heavy iron-core ballast with a simple 1000 Ohm resistance, which was small enough to fit in the base of the bulb. In a full sized fluorescent light fixture, a resistor would run much too hot to be used as the ballast, but it worked in five Watt bulbs. The other difference was, unlike fluorescent tubes, these bulbs did not use mercury vapor, they used a combination of argon and krypton, which are gasses at room temperature. Mercury condenses to a liquid when a standard fluorescent light is turned off, so it needs heaters in the fluorescent tube to vaporize the mercury, and that in turn requires a starter to time the heaters. So, eliminating the mercury vapor eliminated the need for a starter. The rest of the magic was accomplished by the design and composition of the electrodes used in the bulbs, and by the selection of the phosphor. The thing I learned from reading up on this is that we don't need mercury vapor to make a fluorescent light, other gasses are also able to generate enough UV light when they are ionized to excite phosphor. @@theantiquefanatic
They use resistors in the bases. They are neon and argon glow lamps like flicker flame neon ones and little indicator bulbs made to run on straight line voltage, so nothing earth shattering.
I think I am the only person in the world who has a fear of long fluorescent lights- I can handle the little twisty ones, but the very long tube like ones send a shiver in me. I asked my Psychiatrist about this and he said he knows no phobia on the fear of fluorescent lights, so he told me I was his first. "Fluroresaphobia" fear of long glass tubes with poisonous gases in them.....
The poor souls are probably dead but I can understand why they failed around Christmas time. It's because family's were scrapping together money to buy their families presents. Extra for fluorescent bulbs would have took away money they needed elsewhere.
The new Westinghouse used to make a line of compact fluorescent globe lamps with miniature electronic ballast in base of bulb. These came in various sized globes like G40 and G25. They were waterproof, so they could be used in light strings. They came in multiple colors in addition to white. They were sold under the Westinghouse Nanolux name.
Is there a tiny coiled tube inside the globe (like present-day CF), or is it radiant energy like a violet wand?
Very cool lights! Glad to see them in operation.
Thank you very much!
Thanks for this. Never heard of them but a cool piece of history.
Glad you enjoyed it!!
I am a bulb collector and gave a bunch of these myself. They are based on neon and argon glow lamps. Some use argon and an actual phosphor. Like blue and green, and some use neon and Penning gas (blend of neon and argon) to produce the warner colors, and the simple gas discharge and color of the gas glow itself with simple silica powder that us not a phosphor, but a mere light diffuser as was also in soft white incandescent bulbs, was used, so some were legit fluorescent and some were just glow lamps and not fluorescent at all. These lamps each have a carbon resistor in the base which is the ballast and 2 surface glow electrodes. Please note that the blue lamps tend to both dim and have shorter actual life than other lamps in the set because the phosphor degrades fast and the argon gas has larger molecules than neon and hit the electron emission material on the electrodes, destroying it faster than in neon lamps. The Penning gas also does this though less aggressively. The blues dim then fail first, then the greens as they have pure argon as well, next are the non fluorescent Penning gas filled lamps, and longest lasting are the pure neon gas on fluorescent types. Sylvania also developed newer fluorescent phosphors so were instrumental in advancing the development of fluorescent lamp technology. These are a neat item and were made mainly to promote use of fluorescent lighting. I actually have a 1938 Westinghouse MAZDA 15 watt T12 BLUE new old stock, then made by GE for them because Westinghouse wasn’t tooled up to make fluorescent lamps until spring 1939! It was displayed at the 1939 Worlds fair in NY and came with a special built desk lamp I restored, so fluorescent is my favorite lamp to collect along with mercury vapor. Cheers! 👍🏻😋
@@2StrokeDriptroit Great information!! Thank you for sharing!!
If I can find it, I have a large early '60s mercury vapor streetlight bulb with a Mogel (large screw-in) base. It's not doing me any good---
I never knew such a thing ever existed. Very interesting.
Thanks for watching!! ruclips.net/user/shorts9YoR305_XHE?feature=share
Someone call Technology Connections. We totally need 1 hour long video on how they work.
@@TheStanHill I found the patent drawings for them. I will post those soon!
I love TC! Alec, thru the magic of buying TWO sets, could find out how they work, altho it would be sad to break one open. I'd definitely watch that!
@ Yeah… I couldn’t do that…
Now I know what I saw when I was 4 yo in 1955. Thank You.
You are so welcome! Thanks for responding.
I’ve never seen this type of light before and my parents lived through the 1940s (they were married in 1935). Very interesting. Thanks for your video.
@@cak813 Thank you for watching!
What a cool video about a unique piece of holiday history. Great work!
@@1pfuller Thank you very much!!
guy says super rare in the thumbnail, yet proceeds to have 12 different sets! I bow to you! I collect soviet Christmas lights in general, and the rarest one was 60s to 70s "Shishka" or pinecone, made from colored abs plastic, with a shape and texture of a pinecone, with a 12 volt little lamp inside. The OG ones were made from five colors, orange, red, burgundy, blue and green, then quickly later became just yellow green red and blue, so finding the OG sets is next to impossible, yet I have found three already. One absolutely NOS and it is super vibrant.
@@mr.dahliaking.202 That’s awesome! I’d love to see pics
Beautiful lights. Christmas is a very bittersweet time for me, and I long for the days when I would have jumped through hoops of fire for a set of these fluorescent lights.
I understand brother
I have a ton of florescent Christmas lights I have purchased in estate sales over the years. I ran across some when getting some spare bulbs out for the outdoor C9 lights I put up yesterday. I set a few aside to put on the Christmas tree the I put it up in a few days. I haven't used them in years..... You have a nice collection of them.
Awesome!!
Thank you my friend. Hope you have a Happy Thanksgiving!
@@theantiquefanatic You and your family have a Happy Thanksgiving also.
I’m going on 74 years old I have a collective Lightbulb since I was six fluorescent lightbulbs since I was 19 and I’m not stopping now I don’t know what you’re talking about and I have a lot of cool stuff merry Christmas
Merry Christmas
Awesome! They should reproduce these - the hues are amazing.
@@smoovegittar Glad you like them!!
Bubble lights are still the best.
@@RodgerMudd Those are cool too. Especially the lava lamp ones…
I agree. My family always had bubble lights. I've used them for 50 years myself. I just bought 3 new strings. I'm always afraid they'll quit making them, so I buy a few strings every few years to be safe. Can't imagine a tree without them. Wish they'd make the pink tubes again. My Mother had some when I was little.
@@ernestallen5154 I think you are safe. Would love to see photos of your tree decorated. I'll bet it is phenomenal.
@@ernestallen5154 I am happy for you. Plus they are soothing compared to the strobe like flashing LED's.
Love LED Christmas lights
The fact that there was a connection between the set and someone's memories blows my mind. I wish I could know the history of my antique Christmas lights or vinyl records, before being bought by me, as a teenager in the 2000s
I always try to ask
I found a dim one in a box of Christmas ornaments from a grandparent about a decade ago. I finally have a complete set :)
@@packrat-y7j Awesome!!
I remember as a child gazing at the bubble lights on my Grandma tree 🎄🎄🎄
@@chrissmith513 That’s why these old light are so great. Full of memories!
I have a set of these florescent bulbs that was used on the small tree set up in my mother's room at the hospital where I was born just before Christmas in 1945. My father (still in the Army) took photos. They worked for our daughter's first Christmas in 1991. Who knows how long they can last?
@ That is an awesome story!! I wouldn’t use them frequently but I’d say with proper storage they’ll last a very long time.
Merry Christmas
Thank you my friend!
Looks a thousand times better than LED Christmas lights, I dare say.
@@TheloniasBrowntail 💯 agree!
We had a couple of complete sets of these back in the 70s, we never used them because they weren’t as bright. They still were in their boxes in my mother’s basement up until a few years ago. She had her basement “cleaned” and a lot of stuff wasn’t around anymore.
@@cjack121 They weren’t as bright for sure. Sad that they’re gone though…
Had no idea! Thanks.
Very cool... I love these types of things .. i never knew anything about these lights....
Thank you! I agree they are cool!
Born in 1952...we never had these...fascinating. But I can remember the first
miniature lights when they came in the early sixties...made in Italy!!
I have some of those too!
Mom and dad had a set of those. They were weird looking. Unfortunately, mom threw out all our old Christmas decorations. By the time I found out everything was long gone. I don't miss those lights so much, but there were some other decorations that I'd really love to have.
@@xlerb2286 that is sad!!
@@theantiquefanatic Well, yes. But really it's a small thing. They left me much more important things - a good moral foundation, work ethic, many good memories, as well as physical things. But if I could have one thing from those Christmases decorations it would be the felt cloth that was always under the tree and that was probably as much cat hair as it was felt in the later years :)
@ 🤣🤣
The blue bulbs tend to be the hardest to come by.
@@geffreyjewell6546 That is correct!
Pretty Cool Video, I Definitely learned something today! Thanks 👍
@@ThomasGriffin-zn1rr I’m glad you enjoyed it!!
Ever really knew of this type of Christmas lights. Thank you for sharing!
I know! They are so cool!!
So beautiful..
That's why i love lights from 40s to 90s because set of light wires are longer than new light wires today because today light wires are short. Ugh
@@richardlowman6918 Thank you! And so true!!
I used to have a lot of vintage Christmas tree lights but I never knew these existed
@@izzynutz2000 Not many folks do!
Do they blink and flicker when you first turn them on? That's what I wanted to see.
@@vwestlife No they don’t.
Now that's wild!
Wow . They're so neat! 🎄 Great information.
@@kathyflorcruz552 Thank you very much!!
Merry Christmas Larry! Interesting about the history behind these lights. I always learn something new in each of your videos 👍
Thanks Riley! Me too!
That angry dishwasher guy would love these
@@jackcoker8232 🤣🤣
My mom had some glass ornaments she got from my grandmother from the WWII era and what was historically special about them was that they had paper tabs that went inside them to put the hooks through because of the metal rationing at the time!
@@jons.6216 I would love to see photos of them sometime!! theantiquefanatic@gmail.com
really cool! almost pastel in color compared to regular incandescent
@@daviddisandro821 Yeah, I wish they were brighter
So much easier to look at than LEDs.
@@thegreenpickel I know what you mean!
I love everything about this. You look like a long lost brother, but you have the dulcet tones of one from Alachua County. I want you to read me a bed time story.
Thanks!!!🤣🤣
Looks better than LEDs!
@@georgieippolito9924 Amen!!
The outfit is everything, love it! 😂
Thanks!!🤣
You see technology connections video on Xmas lights?
No I don’t think so…
...I'm 75...we had these lights when I was growing up in the 50s & 60s...as well ads what were prolly 30s/40s era Noma incandescent lights...mom & dad never bought any new lights until the late 60s or very early 70s...all of our fluorescent lights were pastel colors..
That is an awesome story. I love hearing about folk's experiences. These things evoke so much nostalgia!!
Oh how cool!!
Thank you!
The warm glow from those bulbs will never be able to be produced by LED. It's just not the same.
Agreed! No comparison!!
Remember those on a grocery store in the 1960,s
That’s awesome!
How did these work, did they have an internal ballast / starter?
Check out this short. ruclips.net/user/shorts9YoR305_XHE?feature=share
Ahhh,that great Disco beat that played.And didnt the Village People put out a Christmas album too?
@@chrisbrady-t1u LOL I’m not sure…
My uncle retired as a mechanical engineer from Osram Sylvania in Versailles, Kentucky.
@@atlantic_love that’s awesome!!
My set was purchased in about '45 or so, by my Grandmother who was working at a drugstore at the time. She saved up for 6 weeks to buy them, even at store discount. I cant recall what she paid, but for 6 weeks wages, they must have been absurdly expensive.
@@chrisingle5839 What an awesome story! Thank you for sharing!! They were expensive and that’s why they weren’t produced long.
Wonder what it looked like inside. 🤔
@@Iconoclasher I’ll try to post the patent documents on instagram soon.
Love them. Are you going to display any this Christmas? Merry Christmas.
Maybe put some in a candolier…
Thanks Mark!
@@theantiquefanatic It might be possible, if clunky looking, to use colored CFL lamps with a suitable base adaptor.
Oh, the mercury!!
🤣🤣🤣
Our entire tree has about 150 fluorescents and c-6 bubbler / figural/ and other miscellaneous lamps.
I’ve taken 2 eight socket c-6 sets and made them a set of 16. Bulbs last much longer and complements the same glow as the fluorescents
Sounds lovely!!!
Interesting to me is that there's no obvious ballast. I wonder if these bulbs use a resistor current limiter in each bulb, like a small neon nightlight. I also wonder how much power they draw.
I’ve been meaning to do a test on the power draw. Just haven’t had time. Will do soon.
Same here. I was hoping for a technical teardown because I have no clue how these would start up. They need a high voltage spike to light up so how did they do it?
Yes. A resistor in the base same as neon indicator and flicker flame bulbs
@@theantiquefanaticthey are about 4 watts each.
Just watched on xmas eve ...
I love the music. Who was that
@@margemiller5503 Me too! I pulled it out of a library in my software.
how do they work????????
@@apfanco I’ll try to post the patent documents on Instagram soon!
Too bad europe never had These , im probably one of the rare who like flourescent light quality
@@ShieyV2komputroniks Me too!!
How many hours were these rated for? Thanks!
@@davidgold5961 That I have no idea about. Must have been pretty robust as they are still here…
Neat idea, but I think different colored neon bulbs would have worked better.
@@thomaswilliams2273 for sure, but these are cool in their own right. A piece of obscure electrical history.
Some are neon bulbs with a silica “soft white” diffusing coating instead of a phosphor. The green and blue are real fluorescent lamps and use argon to make some short wave UV to excite it.
When I was young I had some fluorescent type lamps that were the diameter of a shaprie and about 1.5 inches tall. I lost them when my parents sold our house. Does anyone know what these were? They looked like mini candles.
@@boomer9900 Are you talking about Christmas lights?
What good are they if you don't put them on tree?
@@RodgerMudd To me, they are just cool to have a preserve. Like most collectibles…
Why are they called florescent and not neon?
Good question…. Guess it’s the difference in the gases inside.
Technically speaking, there is a big difference. In a neon light, an electric current passing through neon gas, causes the gas in the tube to produce visible light. In the case of neon gas, that gas can only produce red-orange light and a different gas would be needed in each bulb to produce different colors of light. A fluorescent light bulb is entirely different, all fluorescent lights have mercury vapor inside the bulb (or tube) and an electric current passing through the mercury vapor generates invisible ultraviolet light. This invisible ultraviolet light then strikes a fluorescent coating on the inside of the bulb and this coating is then stimulated by the UV light to re-radiate a specific color of visible light, depending on the type of fluorescent coating used. He mentions this coating in the video, so we know that these are indeed fluorescent bulbs and not neon bulbs, plus if they were all actually neon bulbs, then they would all be orange-yellow when they lit up. @@theantiquefanatic
Because it was a selling point in the early days of fluorescent. Only the green and blue actually use a phosphor that glows, the others use neon or penning gas (neon/argon mix) and are merely neon glow lamps with silica powder same as soft white incandescent and now filament LED bulbs.
I wonder if these were used commercially? I recall several small towns that the mainstreet was maybe five blocks long or so. There would be a string of bulbs across the street, usually strung from one building to the next, maybe every 20 feet or so. These would be left year round but only turned on at Christmas.
Not sure but that’s a great question
@@theantiquefanatic , I recall them as a child and they may have been in some little towns into the early 80s.
@@southernguy35 I have another set that is round but incandescent and much thicker cord. More likely that these were used in the scenario you’re describing. The fluorescent ones were for indoor use only.
I doubt that fluorescent bulbs would have worked well in the cold.
My Grandfather would tell me about when he was a kid. Having a tree with actual candles on it... Small tree 3-4 feet tall with maybe 12 candles attached with wire holders. Light the candles and sing a couple songs then put the candles out right away and have a bucket of water handy.... I would not recommend doing this.
@@stephenm8100 Wow!! No worries 🤣🤣
In Sweden, many of our friends still decorated their trees with wax candles in the nineties. Then those multi-coloured, cheap Taiwanese string sets flooded the market and became a must-have. Candles were pretty and actually safe too, but you obviously had to keep an eye on them 😊
I have a shop light like that at 0:46
The tubes are the fat kind.
T-17’s
@@theantiquefanatic
My understanding is they stopped production of the F90T17 lamps.
Remaining lamps (if you can find them) are as high as $200 each.
Also stopped production of SOX lamps in 2017. Remaining stock is $50+
@@benjaminvella2736 You’re right! They are not easy to find for sure. We’ll discuss that one day soon on a future episode of The Antique FANatic! Stay tuned!!
@@benjaminvella2736as far as I'm aware, GE was the last manufacturer of T-17's. This includes the F90T17, F40T17 / IS, F48PG17, F72PG17 & F96PG17 lamps. Ironically the power groove lamps were only produced by General Electric and the F96PG17 was among the brightest fluorescent tubes ever produced, but operates at 1500mA, so they were interchangeable with VHO lamps and used the same ballast. VHO lamps were made until very recently and they are still available on some websites for a premium price.
If I'm not mistaken the F90T17 lamp is a preheat lamp (requires a starter) but operates at 1500mA and first made in the early 1940s for use in WWII manufacturing facilities, making them an early prototype of the VHO lamps which are rapid start and first made in the 1950s to take the place of the F90T17.
The F40T17/IS lamp was first made in the 1950s. It looks identical to the F90T17 but is an instant start and not electrically interchangeable, for the pins are shunted inside the end caps making this in effect, a single pin base lamp, and is used on an instant start ballast suitable for F40T17/IS, F40T12/IS and F48T12 lamps. This is a low glare lamp and the most common applications were in classrooms, child care centers / nurseries, libraries and similar areas with exposed lamps and soft glare free lighting is desired while providing the same lumens as standard 40 watt 48 inch T12 lamps.
Philips - Westinghouse discontinued T17 lamps sometime in the 1980s or late '70s, and Sylvania discontinued T17 lamps sometime around 1993, when GTE got out of the lighting business and Osram took over.
Today as far as I'm aware, the only T17 lamps still in production are the induction lamps used in highway and parking lot fixtures where extreme long life and efficiency are most important.
I remember Christmas lights when I was a young kid got so hot that they would blister your fingers. All you smelled was the tree being cooked! Do these get hot too?
I haven’t left them on long enough but I’d bet they would get hot…
They get slightly warm. Same as a neon flicker flame bulb, same tech as well
And they were series lights. If one went out, the whole string went out. One Christmas my mother bought plastic snow and threw it all over our tree. It melted all over those hot lights and we never could get it off the bulbs.
I have some
Cool!!
Freddy Roach in a Santa hat🤷🏻
@@fr3dr02 Lol!!
I'm 81 years old and I vividly remember helping Mom string incandescent Christmas lights on our Christmas tree following the end of WWII, but I never heard of fluorescent Christmas lights until seeing your video. Believe me when I say I definitely would have noticed the difference between fluorescent and incandescent blubs back in the nineteen forties. I gave you a thumbs up for telling me something I never knew, but I almost took it back because of that terrible music you played in the middle of the video, although I realize that people today might actually like that awful sound. It's too bad you don't have more of a technical background, because I'd like to know more about how those lights worked. Fluorescent lights of that period need a ballast to raise voltage and limit current, and also a timed starter-heater to vaporize the mercury in the bulbs. These electrical items were too large to fit inside of each Christmas light in those days, so I wonder how Sylvania was able to solve those problems. Decades later, companies were able to eliminate the starter-heater and squeeze a ballast into the base of compact fluorescent bulbs, but I'm assuming that these old Christmas lights were much smaller than the CFLs which came much later. Was there possibly a box that sat on the floor, which may have held a ballast for the entire light string? Given the technology of the nineteen forties, the ballast would probably have weighed at least a pound and probably more.
No actually there is nothing but the bulb. The string is just an average c-7 light string. Not sure how all that works without ballasts and starters. Unless it’s at the base of the bulb.
Regarding the last part of your comment: The starter cans used in fluorescent lights in the nineteen forties were larger than the base of the bulbs you show in your video. And, the ballasts used in fluorescent light fixtures in those days consisted of an iron core transformer and choke, which would never fit in the base of your bulbs. The puzzle of how these bulbs worked piqued my interest, so I decided to do a search for the original patent and find out how they were able to eliminate key parts of a fluorescent light. I believe I found the original patent that was assigned to Sylvania. It's patent number 2,421,571, and it turns out that these Christmas lights had more in common with neon glow lights than with the fluorescent lights of the day. The key to eliminating the starter and heavy ballast was in the fact that these bulbs were only 5 Watts each, and their small physical size allowed the electrodes to be placed close together, eliminating the need to heat the bulb, or raise the voltage above 110 VAC. The low wattage made it possible to replace the heavy iron-core ballast with a simple 1000 Ohm resistance, which was small enough to fit in the base of the bulb. In a full sized fluorescent light fixture, a resistor would run much too hot to be used as the ballast, but it worked in five Watt bulbs. The other difference was, unlike fluorescent tubes, these bulbs did not use mercury vapor, they used a combination of argon and krypton, which are gasses at room temperature. Mercury condenses to a liquid when a standard fluorescent light is turned off, so it needs heaters in the fluorescent tube to vaporize the mercury, and that in turn requires a starter to time the heaters. So, eliminating the mercury vapor eliminated the need for a starter. The rest of the magic was accomplished by the design and composition of the electrodes used in the bulbs, and by the selection of the phosphor. The thing I learned from reading up on this is that we don't need mercury vapor to make a fluorescent light, other gasses are also able to generate enough UV light when they are ionized to excite phosphor. @@theantiquefanatic
They use resistors in the bases. They are neon and argon glow lamps like flicker flame neon ones and little indicator bulbs made to run on straight line voltage, so nothing earth shattering.
I think I am the only person in the world who has a fear of long fluorescent lights- I can handle the little twisty ones, but the very long tube like ones send a shiver in me. I asked my Psychiatrist about this and he said he knows no phobia on the fear of fluorescent lights, so he told me I was his first. "Fluroresaphobia" fear of long glass tubes with poisonous gases in them.....
Can’t say I’ve heard of that either, but have heard of stranger things.
I had the same thing as a kid, I wouldn't even go into a room if one was on in there!
I remember seeing an eight foot tube fall out of a ceiling fixture and smash on the floor right behind some other kids, when I was in kindergarten.
The poor souls are probably dead but I can understand why they failed around Christmas time. It's because family's were scrapping together money to buy their families presents. Extra for fluorescent bulbs would have took away money they needed elsewhere.
@@Thomas-yr9ln Absolutely!!
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Apostrophe alert!
@@jatigre1 🤣🤣
This was not very informative as far as I was concerned
@@jamescrews7949 I appreciate you watching anyway.