So nice to see an electric bulb of that era still functioning! Just like my Grandmother it has spanned 3 different centuries. She was born 1898, died 2004,106 years old. Thanks for sharing Fran.
The whole time I was fearfully anticipating the little [tink] sound that would turn the bulb from a museum piece into a art project on the impermanence of technology.
Thanks for powering that back up again. It really does look neat. I imagine one could make something that looked similar that wouldn't risk a true antique. If I ever got one like that, I might run it anyway when I was around to enjoy it as long as it lasted. At lowered voltage and being careful to ramp the voltage up and then back down. I'd guess it would last quite a while.
That's so cool to see. I have a few modern incandescents that I've replaced with CFLs and LED and I just kept them, given they are kinda getting rare now days. Having one this old is really awesome.
I just absolutely love any type of vintage or antique equipment and devices that are operational. it's a testament to the skill of the Craftsman and the quality of the equipment they produced that it would still be operational after all these decades. we've had a toaster in our kitchen that we have used for over 30 years that was manufactured in 1919 and it's still making excellent toast. I don't think I would replace it with a new one if a new one was given to me... Thank you for showing us This Magnificent electrical Marvel of it's time. I have two Edison bulbs safely packed in my storage now I have to run over there and check the dates on them!
@@johnhowell4908 that's interesting?, maybe there's a reason for the failure, of the more modern, versions of the bulb in your comment also? so would also put the 50/ 60hz power , high power radio waves, all in the one same place in side the bulb? I think the need a science experiment, but not with this bulb?
@@johnhowell4908 There were lightbulbs that exploited that effect by having extra long filaments in weird shapes (and sometimes that glowed differtent colours) with magnets attatched to them that made the filament go all crazy and jittery
About 50 years ago my local electrical shop had one with a magnet in the window display and I have never forgotten it flickering with my nose & palms stuck on the glass.
Just think- What houses it made bright? What families it watched grow? Or... Whas it in a hospital? Where it helped a doctor or nurse care for a patient? Or- What warehouse or factory it helped light? Where it helped the employees do their job? For over 100 years. History. Amazing. Thank you Fran, for what you do. Keep doing your amazing stuff in the lab.
I did live in a house a light bulb like this likely could have been from. A house from the 1800's, it was a once a rich mans house. My engineer dad did buy it and we lived there for about 4 years in the early 80's. A lawyer bought it from us 35 years ago now. All the light switches was black, the round twistable type, a tad hard to twist, much resistance in them springs, but i did like those switches :) It had threee living rooms, the one in the middle we had for tv use and it had large shop windows, one one side it was a piano living room and the other side had a dinner living room with a large table for like 10 people. The dinner living room had its own entrance from the kitchen so the staff there once in the 1800's could serve dinner and then open up the two doors so the people in the living room could be undisturbed and then welcomed to eat. The kitchen had its own staff outside entrance door and a small hall room before one came into the kitchen. I often used that door, more convenient for a child to use than the two doors in the hallway. It had a very large heavy door key, the largest key i have seen in use for houses :) I had one of the copies with a golden christmas gift wrap band around my neck so i as a child should not loose it. It was 6 bedrooms in the house. Toilet upstairs and downstairs, a bathtub and a shower cabinet upstairs. Two large hallways with a stair in between them connected first and second floor. The hallway downstairs had a lovely large 4 pcs E27 bulb dark wooden handmade carved light candelier, with red fabric vertical and horizontal black striped bulb shades on it, and a carved circle around the chandelier on the high roof. Likely not the stock light bulb candeliers, but still old, i think my dad has one of those still but i am not sure, he lives elsewhere. The hall downstairs had a two door entrance room with own entrance door. It was near the river, we had a great boat there, a old wooden boat with bedroom with space for three in it and it had a 6 cylinder petrol engine, the boat was called Old lady in brass letters by the owners before us or before them again. Here is that house so you can go around and see it on Google and actually be there to se it, it was the finest house i has lived in :) www.google.no/maps/@59.2302602,10.9900438,3a,34y,141.91h,98.8t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sOkaCHW_l9WbDwawiogF7Nw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?hl=en It has been painted twice since i lived there, first when we did live there it was stavern gul (stavern yellow) this color combination uteinspirasjon.jotun.no/husfarger-fargekart-2018/jotun-0152-stavern-gul-husfarge/ ) and i did like that color. It got painted green with dark red details, likely the lawyer who bought it did that. And now today it is grey with white details, kind of how it would have looked like when i did live there and if one had a black and white camera :) We did also own the other two floor house on the property, a half-house type called anneks, that house was all white when we did live there, likely the staff helpers once lived there. It was empty when we did live there, the upper floor was rented out for storeage for boat supply something a friend of dad had. The place had a galvanized metal car garage outside that was too old and rusty and got demolished. And the garden had a once stable for a horse, my dad did build it into a childrens house for my little sister instead, with a table, chairs and coffee cups to drink from, and combined it with a shed space place for garden utilities. Yeah, it was a nice house with good view of the river. I can think and imagine how the people did live there before us with likely a nice four wheel horse wagon and things to ride in.. and kerosene lamps to light the house likely before this bulb was on the market.. who knows.. but at least you got a part of that later history we had lol :) I have a hand written letter with history from the late 1800's where my grandpa's mom's sister is telling about how things did look and was back then and the experience of the first car coming to town. They had no paint on the kitchen walls inside like today, a large concrete fireplace in the kitchen where they mostly was and also made food. The animal house had low roof so people had to bend down a little walking there. And she finish the letter saying it was in the age of the kerosene lamps and that the way people did live back then is almost like a dream compared to now (1970's). So yeah, i bet things was different back then. They had a small fire under the old cars to heat the engines up before hand crank starting them i have read and that is somewhat different than today too :)
That truly is a beautiful bulb. They sure don't make 'em like they used to! All the polarizing filter did was slightly reduce reflections off the bulb's outer surface, which is honestly what I expected when others commented on your previous video.
In a museum in the Fort Worth Stockyards their is supposed to be the oldest continuously burning light bulb in existence, it has been several years since I've been in this Museum but to my knowledge it still exists someone should go check it out.
centennialbulb.org/ ... that bulb has been continuously lit (minus some relocation efforts and a break in electrical service) for 117 years, so it only dates to about 1905.
I really admire your use and study of all things vintage. Your test and bench equipment rocks! I have a lot of vintage equipment on my bench as well. Your lamp is great! I think there's one in a Fire Department somewhere that has been lit for like 500 years.
We used carbon filament bulbs for optics experiments, back in the 1970/80s in schools in the UK. They were still available from a couple of school apparatus suppliers. Now there are a number of companies in the UK selling reproduction carbon filament bulbs.
No thank YOU Fran. You've been an unending source of delight and this video is no exception. Finding you and your channel last year was exactly the kind of thing I needed.
The possibility that those who made this bulb in the 1890's considered the chance that it (or any of the bulbs leaving the factory on that day, week, month, year, or ever) would 125 years later be a still-functioning artifact, and an exemplary sample emblematic of it's time is truly fascinating to think about! Another great video!
When I studied my technical highschool back in 80th here in former Czechoslovakia, this was the first task we had in our laboratory: to measure voltage - current curve of wolfram and carbon light bulb. The carbon filament was frail and it would broke down easily. But our teachers had a plenty of those light bulbs in an inventory so they didn't care. But they told us we have something exceptionaly rare in our hands.
I may have youtube's oldest electron tube, made in 1917 or so for ww1. i would need to look into it though. OR.... post the video and internet columbos wishing to prove me wrong will do the work for me...
Totally cool Fran I mean far out I wish they would make bulbs that had that level of longevity today save a heck of a lot of resources instead of what we have today
Fascinating and beautiful . . . People often mistakenly separate science and art. But the truth is, science can be incredibly fascinating and beautiful. Throw in the history and it just adds to the depth and amazement. The folks who made and tested that bulb were fully 19th Century people - astounding to imagine. Thanks for a GREAT way to spend 12 minutes compared to all the other wasteful ways we do!
Well done. It's interesting when you say the sun is 93,000,000 miles away, it sounds like such a large distance, but when someone says 1 astronomical unit, it seems so much closer. I guess it's all in your perspective. The fact that the glass globe is causing the light waves to reflect & refract in all different directions makes it much brighter than if the filament was in open air. You could probably take a paper clip, bend it into a filament shape, hook it up to the variac & get it to glow as bright as the bulb filament, but it would not emit as much light without the globe causing diffraction/reflections.
This is beautiful, and thank you, Fran! You are the BEST! I have a couple very old carbon filament bulbs too, packed away; they are both Edison bulbs, one is red, the other blue glass, and when I can move to my next home, I hope to be able to set them up in my curio cabinet once again to have them in a working display, on a dimmer, as I used to in my prior home. I do not do videos, but I'm certain you would like them and be interested in them.
I shared a link to this on my facebook, where it was instantly popular with even my non-techie friends. Everyone loves an old thing that works. (Thank goodness!). The glow of the filament is a wonderful and beautiful thing to behold, so is the mind that controls the hand that turns the dial that Variac built. Great video. Also, in the comments when I shared it, I discovered that another friend of mine is also a massive FranLab fan, which was a nice connection to make, along with those made by the electric lamp itself. I know you're freaked out by having more subscribers but if you get 20 more it's my fault. Cheers from Louisville.
I got a bunch of bulbs we pulled out of an old hotel built in the 1800s. I'm sure they from like 1899 but I keep them packed up and aint pulling them out. As an electrican I've replaced a ton of old crap. The filament is most likely cellulose filament at that time frame. I might be wrong on this but from what I can remember the very first material (other than bamboo) was most commonly coconut.
I'll bet one thing that the factory tester wouldn't have been thinking about, was the person who would be lighting it up again almost 125 years later! I doubt it would even occur them that it would still exist, let alone be functional after all that time. One thing that is for certain, I've loved old lightbulbs since I was a child, and especially those quaint (and antiquated, even in the 1960s) 'balloon' style bulbs with what looked liked yards of filament all zigzagged up and down. I have only a few old bulbs in my collection now, and sadly, nothing older than about the early 1950s. Among them though, are about 4 or 5x 250W ex street lighting bulbs, new and unused - ex municipal stock. They are identical to the ones used in the lamp outside our house since before I was born. All I need is the correct lantern to display one. It's good to know that some of us are keeping these historic artefacts safe and sound.
Fran, I do have an Edison New Type 32CP dated 1880. I believe from what little bit I can find, it’s rated at 50 volts. It has a Thomas Houston style base but it’s larger and of course an Edison. Fortunately it has never been lit. So I am hesitant to try. I do have several others in my collection that are from between 1889 and 1890 that I can light. Since you requested. I have never posted a video on TH-cam, but I will attempt to make and post a video of lighting a couple.
I own one just like it that still works. I found it when I was a kid and an old house was being remodeled. Mine has the patent year stamped in the base.
I might have a bulb that is older! Idk but it is a packard bulb with a brass Thompson Houston base and I found a photo of the ad for it dated 1898 so it’s up to anyone’s judgement which one is older as a patent date doesn’t neccessarily mean the manufacture date. Get back to me if you want a photo of the bulb the bulb is operational
The reflections are straight on, that's why polarizing doesn't work, it only works when the reflection is at an angle 🙂 How about a nice soft filter or star filter instead 😁
I have GE bulbs both pre-war and post war. They look pretty much just like more recent "modern" incandescent light bulbs. GE drove most of the tech back in those days that hasn't changed much at all until replaced by CFL and LED. Truly good quality from those times!
Fun video. BTW- Light from the sun is columated (parallel) - not polarized. One way to polarize light is to reflect it off of a surface at a steep angle. The light can then be split into S and P ( sometimes referred to as Skip and Plunge). Polarized glasses take advantage of this by blocking the glare that skips off of surfaces. I've never tried shining direct sunlight through a rotating polarizer to see if its intensity varies with angle. Might be an interesting the experiment. I enjoy your shows..
Fran the only person I can think of that may have a similar or older bulb might be glasslinger but this was wonderful to see. 😁 I often think the same about the first person that either saw or touched an old item in my possession. What their lives were like etc. I have a letter dated 20 years earlier than your bulb in which a sister writing to her brother visiting other family far away, mentions briefly one of the children working on his own telephone. If they kept a journal, I'm sure it would have some interesting insights into the mind of that maker.
You could get rid of the glare of *other* objects using polarizes, just not the filament itself. Would have to be circular polarizers though, and you'd need a big one- when circularly polarizers light reflects specularly like off the glass it reverses the direction of its polarization. So if all the light from outside passed through a circular polarizer, then the reflected light would not be able to escape. Circular polarizers are really *weird* though and don't behave like most other objects. They're non Invertible for one- you can put two in a row, and see through, flip one and suddenly it blocks the light. Non commutative too- flip the order of which one's in front and it can switch from blocking to passing light.
While it's not older in terms of manufacture, I have a 250w mercury vapor bulb that has something like 120,000 hours of use on it and incredibly still works. Philips lifeguard I think is what it's branded
I own a few carbon filament bulbs, including a really cool-looking 300 watt globe-style bulb. It looks amazing lit up, but you could cook a ham under it when it's running at full power--and the light it puts out still isn't that bright. I understand now why so many old, pre-tungsten lamps have three or even four light sockets in them after owning that bulb, and why they were made out of mostly non-flammable material.
Every time I see something like this I fantasize about how the people who developed this older technology would react to seeing what their ideas have advanced into today. This goes for carbon filament light bulbs evolving into high power LEDs, and old, TINY black and white analog TVs evolving into the 85 inch OLED and QLED flatscreen HD digital TVs of today, and the old "movie magic" stop-motion and film masking technology of the 1930s into the high definition CGI "movie magic" we now take for granted. It also makes me wonder what's in store for us in the future. It kinda makes me want to live A LOT longer than I will, just to be amazed at what is to come. Unlike so many jaded people in the world, I'm still amazed at what is possible TODAY, even when these advanced technologies are in common use all around me.
I’m surprised that the slow ramp up is good for the bulb. I remember doing a physics experiment at university. We were evaporating aluminium from a tungsten filament. This was done at extremely high vacuum (two stage vacuum system with a turbo molecular pump). We found that when we dialed up the voltage slowly, the filament burnt out prematurely (not sure why, perhaps it got hotspots or something). When we turned on the voltage right at the desired setting, things worked much better. Could be that this is all heavily affected by having a chunk of aluminium foil wrapped around a tungsten filament of course! Would be interested in a video explaining why the slow ramp up is beneficial :) great vid. Love your obscure equipment finds!
Thank you, so scared it was going to go "tink" from shock even with the power down. reminds me of being a kid using - jam jars & old hairdryer wires then changing the air in it. 💡
No worry about breaking the lamp. At least In 1924 there was a shop in Helsinki which repaired broken lamps. As you can all see from the announcement down the page, a repaired lamp is much improved and has more complete vacuum and consumes less electrons: runeberg.org/img/radio/1925/0020.5.png
um... I think the reason the polarizer doesn't work with these reflections is mostly that the reflection angles are too near to Normal. Reflections off windshields, e.g., are highly polarized because those angles are much shallower. It's true that the Sky is somewhat polarized, because most Rayleigh Scattering happens just once and, since sunlight is nearly *colimated* (as you do note), it mostly couples to an electrically-horizontal mode.
Very cool, Fran! Light bulbs were high-tech back in 1896, probably like working at Tesla or SpaceX. Your video reminds me of how versatile autotransformers are in a lab!
👍👍THAT!! Is really really cool! As a retired electrician I never did come across any bulbs like that...Old Knob and Tube wiring systems yes but not this. Heck watching this made me more nervous then you lol! Good Stuff 💡
Great! Although I get blamed for saving old "junk", I cannot present anything nearly as old. What I have been told, my childhood home got electricity exactly for the Christmas, 1932. Must have been with tungsten filaments by then. Probably the oldest item I could even enter to a competition is a single tube radio from about 1925 that ended to my possession from my mother's childhood home. I have a photo of it, but as far as I know, there is no way of attaching it to these messages.
I just wanted to thank you Fran for keeping this channel going, but it appears that everyone other outrunned me. Mmmm....maybe someday in 2143 they will say : "This is Franlab, first relevant female electronics channel"
The polariser did clean the image up quite a bit (sharper, reduced flare effects). I'm wondering if that is a result of the ND (neutral density) effect of the polariser rather than any actual polarisation. ie the ND in front of the lens is bringing the brightness more in line with what the sensor/lens combination can competently deal with. A neutral density filter is very useful when photographing very bright objects directly, even (or especially) in the digital era. I'm an old photographer from the film/chemical era, in case that wasn't already obvious. This kind of technical aspect of photography was once my bread and butter. I was an old fashioned zone system idealist. (how many modern photographers even know what that is?)
Thank you for being the caretaker of this wonderful piece of history and sharing it with us!
I've never been so happy to see a light bulb turn on!!
Great gift to TH-cam community, thanks.
Thumgs up... as usual!
So many lives have come and gone since that bulb was made. My great grandparents lived and died between then & now. Absolutely amazing !!
So nice to see an electric bulb of that era still functioning! Just like my Grandmother it has spanned 3 different centuries. She was born 1898, died 2004,106 years old.
Thanks for sharing Fran.
What a lovely glow that bulb gives - I can almost warm my hands on it.
That was wonderful! How amazing that 124 years later we are still able to enjoy it. Thank you for this! It was mesmerizing.
Ahh, nice!
Lasted two million times longer than my modern Edison bulb that was used maybe 5 hours over five years(used very sparingly). XD
I would be scared to handle it let alone turn it on! Nice piece of history.
4:24
Probably not.
They were thinking "wow, this is the newest bulb"
You were thinking "wow, this is the oldest bulb"
;)
I didn't think polarising filters would block the reflections. I think 60-80 volts is my favourite.
But truly a thing of beauty.
Antique bulb therapy...... so calming to watch.
Thank you for sharing history. Greetings from Karachi, Pakistan.
The whole time I was fearfully anticipating the little [tink] sound that would turn the bulb from a museum piece into a art project on the impermanence of technology.
Thanks for powering that back up again. It really does look neat. I imagine one could make something that looked similar that wouldn't risk a true antique. If I ever got one like that, I might run it anyway when I was around to enjoy it as long as it lasted. At lowered voltage and being careful to ramp the voltage up and then back down. I'd guess it would last quite a while.
"Let's dial it down and give it a rest."
Wise words.
Love everything about this video.
Wow it's like the cartoon bulbs! With those lovely loops. So they are based off real old bulbs.
That's so cool to see. I have a few modern incandescents that I've replaced with CFLs and LED and I just kept them, given they are kinda getting rare now days. Having one this old is really awesome.
Working electronics from the 19th century are so rare, thank you for the close up detailed look at this gem.
Ahhhh! It is nice to see something older than I am that still works. Thanks Fran, you made my day.
I guess, I won't find any working device older then me when I retire.
It feels like you pulled that bulb back through a time machine. What a treat to see it in mint condition!
I just absolutely love any type of vintage or antique equipment and devices that are operational. it's a testament to the skill of the Craftsman and the quality of the equipment they produced that it would still be operational after all these decades. we've had a toaster in our kitchen that we have used for over 30 years that was manufactured in 1919 and it's still making excellent toast. I don't think I would replace it with a new one if a new one was given to me... Thank you for showing us This Magnificent electrical Marvel of it's time. I have two Edison bulbs safely packed in my storage now I have to run over there and check the dates on them!
I have never been so excited to see a lightbulb in my life!
At Edison Museum in NY and in FL have seen those old type of Lamps still burning (very dimly) hopefully on proper DC as Edison intended.
Beautiful, simply beautiful.
Other people have a fireplace on their screen to feel nice in the cold month.
I have Fran's old light bulb.
As you running your bulb on AC power keep magnets away from it or it will shake itself to bits! It is a coil efter all.
@@johnhowell4908 that's interesting?, maybe there's a reason for the failure, of the more modern, versions of the bulb in your comment also? so would also put the 50/ 60hz power , high power radio waves, all in the one same place in side the bulb? I think the need a science experiment, but not with this bulb?
@@johnhowell4908 There were lightbulbs that exploited that effect by having extra long filaments in weird shapes (and sometimes that glowed differtent colours) with magnets attatched to them that made the filament go all crazy and jittery
About 50 years ago my local electrical shop had one with a magnet in the window display and I have never forgotten it flickering with my nose & palms stuck on the glass.
Stuff from that era tends to be made really well. I think your channel is Frantastic.
Just think-
What houses it made bright?
What families it watched grow?
Or...
Whas it in a hospital?
Where it helped a doctor or nurse care for a patient?
Or-
What warehouse or factory it helped light?
Where it helped the employees do their job?
For over 100 years.
History. Amazing.
Thank you Fran, for what you do.
Keep doing your amazing stuff in the lab.
I did live in a house a light bulb like this likely could have been from.
A house from the 1800's, it was a once a rich mans house. My engineer dad did buy it and we lived there for about 4 years in the early 80's. A lawyer bought it from us 35 years ago now.
All the light switches was black, the round twistable type, a tad hard to twist, much resistance in them springs, but i did like those switches :)
It had threee living rooms, the one in the middle we had for tv use and it had large shop windows, one one side it was a piano living room and the other side had a dinner living room with a large table for like 10 people.
The dinner living room had its own entrance from the kitchen so the staff there once in the 1800's could serve dinner and then open up the two doors so the people in the living room could be undisturbed and then welcomed to eat.
The kitchen had its own staff outside entrance door and a small hall room before one came into the kitchen. I often used that door, more convenient for a child to use than the two doors in the hallway. It had a very large heavy door key, the largest key i have seen in use for houses :) I had one of the copies with a golden christmas gift wrap band around my neck so i as a child should not loose it.
It was 6 bedrooms in the house. Toilet upstairs and downstairs, a bathtub and a shower cabinet upstairs. Two large hallways with a stair in between them connected first and second floor.
The hallway downstairs had a lovely large 4 pcs E27 bulb dark wooden handmade carved light candelier, with red fabric vertical and horizontal black striped bulb shades on it, and a carved circle around the chandelier on the high roof. Likely not the stock light bulb candeliers, but still old, i think my dad has one of those still but i am not sure, he lives elsewhere.
The hall downstairs had a two door entrance room with own entrance door.
It was near the river, we had a great boat there, a old wooden boat with bedroom with space for three in it and it had a 6 cylinder petrol engine, the boat was called Old lady in brass letters by the owners before us or before them again.
Here is that house so you can go around and see it on Google and actually be there to se it, it was the finest house i has lived in :)
www.google.no/maps/@59.2302602,10.9900438,3a,34y,141.91h,98.8t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sOkaCHW_l9WbDwawiogF7Nw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?hl=en
It has been painted twice since i lived there, first when we did live there it was stavern gul (stavern yellow) this color combination uteinspirasjon.jotun.no/husfarger-fargekart-2018/jotun-0152-stavern-gul-husfarge/ ) and i did like that color.
It got painted green with dark red details, likely the lawyer who bought it did that. And now today it is grey with white details, kind of how it would have looked like when i did live there and if one had a black and white camera :)
We did also own the other two floor house on the property, a half-house type called anneks, that house was all white when we did live there, likely the staff helpers once lived there. It was empty when we did live there, the upper floor was rented out for storeage for boat supply something a friend of dad had.
The place had a galvanized metal car garage outside that was too old and rusty and got demolished. And the garden had a once stable for a horse, my dad did build it into a childrens house for my little sister instead, with a table, chairs and coffee cups to drink from, and combined it with a shed space place for garden utilities. Yeah, it was a nice house with good view of the river.
I can think and imagine how the people did live there before us with likely a nice four wheel horse wagon and things to ride in.. and kerosene lamps to light the house likely before this bulb was on the market.. who knows.. but at least you got a part of that later history we had lol :)
I have a hand written letter with history from the late 1800's where my grandpa's mom's sister is telling about how things did look and was back then and the experience of the first car coming to town.
They had no paint on the kitchen walls inside like today, a large concrete fireplace in the kitchen where they mostly was and also made food. The animal house had low roof so people had to bend down a little walking there. And she finish the letter saying it was in the age of the kerosene lamps and that the way people did live back then is almost like a dream compared to now (1970's).
So yeah, i bet things was different back then.
They had a small fire under the old cars to heat the engines up before hand crank starting them i have read and that is somewhat different than today too :)
That truly is a beautiful bulb. They sure don't make 'em like they used to!
All the polarizing filter did was slightly reduce reflections off the bulb's outer surface, which is honestly what I expected when others commented on your previous video.
In a museum in the Fort Worth Stockyards their is supposed to be the oldest continuously burning light bulb in existence, it has been several years since I've been in this Museum but to my knowledge it still exists someone should go check it out.
There's a firestation somewhere with an old light bulb. Still being used.
www.oldest.org/technology/light-bulbs/#:~:text=Although%20the%20Ediswan%20light%20bulb%20owned%20by%20Beth,said%20that%20the%20bulb%20was%20130%20years%20old.
centennialbulb.org/ ... that bulb has been continuously lit (minus some relocation efforts and a break in electrical service) for 117 years, so it only dates to about 1905.
There's a whole episode of Citation Needed devoted to it
4:12 He was thinking about when his shift ended so he could go meet his sweetheart at the corner soda shop.
I really admire your use and study of all things vintage. Your test and bench equipment rocks! I have a lot of vintage equipment on my bench as well.
Your lamp is great!
I think there's one in a Fire Department somewhere that has been lit for like 500 years.
We used carbon filament bulbs for optics experiments, back in the 1970/80s in schools in the UK. They were still available from a couple of school apparatus suppliers. Now there are a number of companies in the UK selling reproduction carbon filament bulbs.
It's really starting to incandesce now.
Illuminating...
No thank YOU Fran. You've been an unending source of delight and this video is no exception. Finding you and your channel last year was exactly the kind of thing I needed.
What a happy mid winter pleasure. Thanks Fran!
Big thanks for sharing that little treasure with us!
The possibility that those who made this bulb in the 1890's considered the chance that it (or any of the bulbs leaving the factory on that day, week, month, year, or ever) would 125 years later be a still-functioning artifact, and an exemplary sample emblematic of it's time is truly fascinating to think about! Another great video!
When I studied my technical highschool back in 80th here in former Czechoslovakia, this was the first task we had in our laboratory: to measure voltage - current curve of wolfram and carbon light bulb. The carbon filament was frail and it would broke down easily. But our teachers had a plenty of those light bulbs in an inventory so they didn't care. But they told us we have something exceptionaly rare in our hands.
Beautiful!! I’d be worried I’d drop it. Before it was lit, I was wondering the possibility of the filament burning up due to vacuum leak
I may have youtube's oldest electron tube, made in 1917 or so for ww1. i would need to look into it though.
OR.... post the video and internet columbos wishing to prove me wrong will do the work for me...
Y'know for the annoyingness that those people bring... They have their uses. lol
"Just one more thing..."
@@rodrigoishaan9347 or yknow.
Trust your partner...
Thank you, Fran, for that lovely Moment of Zen!
Totally cool Fran I mean far out I wish they would make bulbs that had that level of longevity today save a heck of a lot of resources instead of what we have today
Got some from 1930's that look like that one, made by Siemens in Germany.
Fascinating and beautiful . . . People often mistakenly separate science and art. But the truth is, science can be incredibly fascinating and beautiful. Throw in the history and it just adds to the depth and amazement. The folks who made and tested that bulb were fully 19th Century people - astounding to imagine. Thanks for a GREAT way to spend 12 minutes compared to all the other wasteful ways we do!
4:57 - "I'm just so happy..." Me too Fran. Me too.
Well done. It's interesting when you say the sun is 93,000,000 miles away, it sounds like such a large distance, but when someone says 1 astronomical unit, it seems so much closer. I guess it's all in your perspective. The fact that the glass globe is causing the light waves to reflect & refract in all different directions makes it much brighter than if the filament was in open air. You could probably take a paper clip, bend it into a filament shape, hook it up to the variac & get it to glow as bright as the bulb filament, but it would not emit as much light without the globe causing diffraction/reflections.
This is beautiful, and thank you, Fran! You are the BEST! I have a couple very old carbon filament bulbs too, packed away; they are both Edison bulbs, one is red, the other blue glass, and when I can move to my next home, I hope to be able to set them up in my curio cabinet once again to have them in a working display, on a dimmer, as I used to in my prior home. I do not do videos, but I'm certain you would like them and be interested in them.
I shared a link to this on my facebook, where it was instantly popular with even my non-techie friends. Everyone loves an old thing that works. (Thank goodness!). The glow of the filament is a wonderful and beautiful thing to behold, so is the mind that controls the hand that turns the dial that Variac built. Great video. Also, in the comments when I shared it, I discovered that another friend of mine is also a massive FranLab fan, which was a nice connection to make, along with those made by the electric lamp itself. I know you're freaked out by having more subscribers but if you get 20 more it's my fault. Cheers from Louisville.
I got a bunch of bulbs we pulled out of an old hotel built in the 1800s. I'm sure they from like 1899 but I keep them packed up and aint pulling them out. As an electrican I've replaced a ton of old crap.
The filament is most likely cellulose filament at that time frame. I might be wrong on this but from what I can remember the very first material (other than bamboo) was most commonly coconut.
That's seriously cool.
The oldest things I own are some tubes from the 20s.
4:04 This sorta has a Mr. Rogers feel to it. It's very pleasant and thoughtful.
Nice video Fran thank you for all you do to preserve antique electronics.
Thank you for a ride in Fran's Fantastic Time Machine.
Amazing - - thanks for sharing. What beautiful colors as the voltage varied. Imagining all the history that this bulb has existed through!
Thanks for the beautiful history lesson. My two favorite thing history and electronics.
That's awesome! Love how you showcase older technology's.
I'll bet one thing that the factory tester wouldn't have been thinking about, was the person who would be lighting it up again almost 125 years later! I doubt it would even occur them that it would still exist, let alone be functional after all that time.
One thing that is for certain, I've loved old lightbulbs since I was a child, and especially those quaint (and antiquated, even in the 1960s) 'balloon' style bulbs with what looked liked yards of filament all zigzagged up and down. I have only a few old bulbs in my collection now, and sadly, nothing older than about the early 1950s. Among them though, are about 4 or 5x 250W ex street lighting bulbs, new and unused - ex municipal stock. They are identical to the ones used in the lamp outside our house since before I was born. All I need is the correct lantern to display one.
It's good to know that some of us are keeping these historic artefacts safe and sound.
Fran, I do have an Edison New Type 32CP dated 1880. I believe from what little bit I can find, it’s rated at 50 volts. It has a Thomas Houston style base but it’s larger and of course an Edison. Fortunately it has never been lit. So I am hesitant to try. I do have several others in my collection that are from between 1889 and 1890 that I can light. Since you requested. I have never posted a video on TH-cam, but I will attempt to make and post a video of lighting a couple.
I own one just like it that still works. I found it when I was a kid and an old house was being remodeled. Mine has the patent year stamped in the base.
I might have a bulb that is older! Idk but it is a packard bulb with a brass Thompson Houston base and I found a photo of the ad for it dated 1898 so it’s up to anyone’s judgement which one is older as a patent date doesn’t neccessarily mean the manufacture date. Get back to me if you want a photo of the bulb the bulb is operational
The reflections are straight on, that's why polarizing doesn't work, it only works when the reflection is at an angle 🙂 How about a nice soft filter or star filter instead 😁
Your shirt has what looks to be the logo from the Heathkit days. I miss those kits!
Mom says she made filaments during WW2 at GE. I would love to see one of those bulbs.
I have GE bulbs both pre-war and post war. They look pretty much just like more recent "modern" incandescent light bulbs. GE drove most of the tech back in those days that hasn't changed much at all until replaced by CFL and LED. Truly good quality from those times!
Fun video. BTW- Light from the sun is columated (parallel) - not polarized. One way to polarize light is to reflect it off of a surface at a steep angle. The light can then be split into S and P ( sometimes referred to as Skip and Plunge). Polarized glasses take advantage of this by blocking the glare that skips off of surfaces. I've never tried shining direct sunlight through a rotating polarizer to see if its intensity varies with angle. Might be an interesting the experiment. I enjoy your shows..
Came to the comments for this ;)
Lovely! It really is something special to own, love and present.
60v no reflection, awesome. Thanks for sharing. Like hearing the joy in your voice.
Thanks for having us
This was illuminating!
Fran the only person I can think of that may have a similar or older bulb might be glasslinger but this was wonderful to see. 😁 I often think the same about the first person that either saw or touched an old item in my possession. What their lives were like etc. I have a letter dated 20 years earlier than your bulb in which a sister writing to her brother visiting other family far away, mentions briefly one of the children working on his own telephone. If they kept a journal, I'm sure it would have some interesting insights into the mind of that maker.
You could get rid of the glare of *other* objects using polarizes, just not the filament itself.
Would have to be circular polarizers though, and you'd need a big one- when circularly polarizers light reflects specularly like off the glass it reverses the direction of its polarization. So if all the light from outside passed through a circular polarizer, then the reflected light would not be able to escape.
Circular polarizers are really *weird* though and don't behave like most other objects.
They're non Invertible for one- you can put two in a row, and see through, flip one and suddenly it blocks the light.
Non commutative too- flip the order of which one's in front and it can switch from blocking to passing light.
While it's not older in terms of manufacture, I have a 250w mercury vapor bulb that has something like 120,000 hours of use on it and incredibly still works. Philips lifeguard I think is what it's branded
Beautiful bulb!
Thank you for sharing your bulb! I’d be afraid to even look at that bulb in person. Things have a bad habit of falling from my hands!
When bulbs were made to last, not made to fail.
Oh ya here comes that great tune on the slow fade in with a fade out
That is am amazing piece of old technology of history.
Beautifull happy lamp!
Great little video.
Amazing! Such a priceless antique IMO!
A proper, genuine Edison lamp. Phenominal. Thanks Fran!
It's always a good day when I wake up to new Fran content! Thanks as always :)
Can you feel the heat coming off at 100V? That’s an absolutely beautiful color!!
I own a few carbon filament bulbs, including a really cool-looking 300 watt globe-style bulb. It looks amazing lit up, but you could cook a ham under it when it's running at full power--and the light it puts out still isn't that bright. I understand now why so many old, pre-tungsten lamps have three or even four light sockets in them after owning that bulb, and why they were made out of mostly non-flammable material.
Every time I see something like this I fantasize about how the people who developed this older technology would react to seeing what their ideas have advanced into today. This goes for carbon filament light bulbs evolving into high power LEDs, and old, TINY black and white analog TVs evolving into the 85 inch OLED and QLED flatscreen HD digital TVs of today, and the old "movie magic" stop-motion and film masking technology of the 1930s into the high definition CGI "movie magic" we now take for granted. It also makes me wonder what's in store for us in the future. It kinda makes me want to live A LOT longer than I will, just to be amazed at what is to come. Unlike so many jaded people in the world, I'm still amazed at what is possible TODAY, even when these advanced technologies are in common use all around me.
I’m surprised that the slow ramp up is good for the bulb. I remember doing a physics experiment at university. We were evaporating aluminium from a tungsten filament. This was done at extremely high vacuum (two stage vacuum system with a turbo molecular pump). We found that when we dialed up the voltage slowly, the filament burnt out prematurely (not sure why, perhaps it got hotspots or something). When we turned on the voltage right at the desired setting, things worked much better. Could be that this is all heavily affected by having a chunk of aluminium foil wrapped around a tungsten filament of course! Would be interested in a video explaining why the slow ramp up is beneficial :) great vid. Love your obscure equipment finds!
Thank you, so scared it was going to go "tink" from shock even with the power down.
reminds me of being a kid using - jam jars & old hairdryer wires then changing the air in it. 💡
Always interesting...please don't let it burn out
No worry about breaking the lamp. At least In 1924 there was a shop in Helsinki which repaired broken lamps. As you can all see from the announcement down the page, a repaired lamp is much improved and has more complete vacuum and consumes less electrons: runeberg.org/img/radio/1925/0020.5.png
You don't need a polarized light source - the polarization comes from refecting or refracting the light off/through dielectric surfaces.
Love it, so soothing to watch.
It so beautiful to see that filament glowing orange in color😍😍
um... I think the reason the polarizer doesn't work with these reflections is mostly that the reflection angles are too near to Normal. Reflections off windshields, e.g., are highly polarized because those angles are much shallower. It's true that the Sky is somewhat polarized, because most Rayleigh Scattering happens just once and, since sunlight is nearly *colimated* (as you do note), it mostly couples to an electrically-horizontal mode.
Very cool, Fran! Light bulbs were high-tech back in 1896, probably like working at Tesla or SpaceX. Your video reminds me of how versatile autotransformers are in a lab!
👍👍THAT!! Is really really cool! As a retired electrician I never did come across any bulbs like that...Old Knob and Tube wiring systems yes but not this. Heck watching this made me more nervous then you lol! Good Stuff 💡
Fran, you rock !
Great! Although I get blamed for saving old "junk", I cannot present anything nearly as old. What I have been told, my childhood home got electricity exactly for the Christmas, 1932. Must have been with tungsten filaments by then. Probably the oldest item I could even enter to a competition is a single tube radio from about 1925 that ended to my possession from my mother's childhood home. I have a photo of it, but as far as I know, there is no way of attaching it to these messages.
I just wanted to thank you Fran for keeping this channel going, but it appears that everyone other outrunned me. Mmmm....maybe someday in 2143 they will say : "This is Franlab, first relevant female electronics channel"
The polariser did clean the image up quite a bit (sharper, reduced flare effects). I'm wondering if that is a result of the ND (neutral density) effect of the polariser rather than any actual polarisation. ie the ND in front of the lens is bringing the brightness more in line with what the sensor/lens combination can competently deal with. A neutral density filter is very useful when photographing very bright objects directly, even (or especially) in the digital era.
I'm an old photographer from the film/chemical era, in case that wasn't already obvious. This kind of technical aspect of photography was once my bread and butter. I was an old fashioned zone system idealist. (how many modern photographers even know what that is?)
So neat! Thank you so much for sharing this with us all ❤️