Super Rare 1940's Antique Fluorescent Christmas Lights

[@djm5k]

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.

[@dynatrak]

Very cool lights! Glad to see them in operation.

[@theantiquefanatic]

Thank you very much!

[@mr.dahliaking.202]

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.

[@theantiquefanatic]

@@mr.dahliaking.202 That’s awesome! I’d love to see pics

[@rayfluorescent7483]

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

[@theantiquefanatic]

Merry Christmas

[@vwestlife]

Do they blink and flicker when you first turn them on? That's what I wanted to see.

[@theantiquefanatic]

@@vwestlife No they don’t.

[@RRsalin]

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

[@theantiquefanatic]

I always try to ask

[@davida1hiwaaynet]

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.

[@theantiquefanatic]

I understand brother

[@yytyyy5329]

The outfit is everything, love it! 😂

[@theantiquefanatic]

Thanks!!🤣

[@atlantic_love]

My uncle retired as a mechanical engineer from Osram Sylvania in Versailles, Kentucky.

[@theantiquefanatic]

@@atlantic_love that’s awesome!!

[@BobHoehn-f2h]

Merry Christmas

[@theantiquefanatic]

Thank you my friend!

[@TheStanHill]

Someone call Technology Connections. We totally need 1 hour long video on how they work.

[@theantiquefanatic]

@@TheStanHill I found the patent drawings for them. I will post those soon!

[@paulluongo2756]

Very cool... I love these types of things .. i never knew anything about these lights....

[@theantiquefanatic]

Thank you! I agree they are cool!

[@robertunderwood3393]

Remember those on a grocery store in the 1960,s

[@theantiquefanatic]

That’s awesome!

[@OldCarAlley]

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.

[@theantiquefanatic]

Awesome!!

[@theantiquefanatic]

Thank you my friend. Hope you have a Happy Thanksgiving!

[@OldCarAlley]

@@theantiquefanatic You and your family have a Happy Thanksgiving also.

[@thomasroell8979]

Ever really knew of this type of Christmas lights. Thank you for sharing!

[@theantiquefanatic]

I know! They are so cool!!

[@oldtvnut]

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.

[@theantiquefanatic]

I’ve been meaning to do a test on the power draw. Just haven’t had time. Will do soon.

[@Ni5ei]

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?

[@rileyhenderson-cr2su]

Merry Christmas Larry! Interesting about the history behind these lights. I always learn something new in each of your videos 👍

[@theantiquefanatic]

Thanks Riley! Me too!

[@BobSmooth-hs5ko]

You see technology connections video on Xmas lights?

[@theantiquefanatic]

No I don’t think so…

[@thomaswilliams2273]

Neat idea, but I think different colored neon bulbs would have worked better.

[@theantiquefanatic]

@@thomaswilliams2273 for sure, but these are cool in their own right. A piece of obscure electrical history.

[@cyrysvonnachtseite4546]

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

[@theantiquefanatic]

Sounds lovely!!!

[@midwaymonster30]

The warm glow from those bulbs will never be able to be produced by LED. It's just not the same.

[@theantiquefanatic]

Agreed! No comparison!!

[@cynthiajones1113]

Oh how cool!!

[@theantiquefanatic]

Thank you!

[@stevewalker412]

Just watched on xmas eve ...

[@mmclem1112]

Love them. Are you going to display any this Christmas? Merry Christmas.

[@theantiquefanatic]

Maybe put some in a candolier…

[@theantiquefanatic]

Thanks Mark!

[@SeekingTheLoveThatGodMeans7648]

@@theantiquefanatic It might be possible, if clunky looking, to use colored CFL lamps with a suitable base adaptor.

[@southernguy35]

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.

[@theantiquefanatic]

Not sure but that’s a great question

[@southernguy35]

@@theantiquefanatic , I recall them as a child and they may have been in some little towns into the early 80s.

[@theantiquefanatic]

@@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.

[@oldtvnut]

I doubt that fluorescent bulbs would have worked well in the cold.

[@rayfluorescent7483]

I have some

[@theantiquefanatic]

Cool!!

[@ShieyV2komputroniks]

Too bad europe never had These , im probably one of the rare who like flourescent light quality

[@theantiquefanatic]

@@ShieyV2komputroniks Me too!!

[@crossbow1203]

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?

[@theantiquefanatic]

I haven’t left them on long enough but I’d bet they would get hot…

[@spankyharland9845]

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.....

[@theantiquefanatic]

Can’t say I’ve heard of that either, but have heard of stranger things.

[@laurdy]

I had the same thing as a kid, I wouldn't even go into a room if one was on in there!

[@mistermonkey1973]

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.

[@itisonlyadream]

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.

[@theantiquefanatic]

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.

[@itisonlyadream]

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

[@benjaminvella2736]

I have a shop light like that at 0:46 The tubes are the fat kind.

[@theantiquefanatic]

T-17’s

[@benjaminvella2736]

@@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+

[@theantiquefanatic]

@@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!!

[@rarelampcollector]

​@@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.

[@youdontknowme5969]

🤯⁉😍

[@dan13ljks0n]

Why are they called florescent and not neon?

[@theantiquefanatic]

Good question…. Guess it’s the difference in the gases inside.

[@itisonlyadream]

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