The Secret Life of the Electric light - Remastered

I've been in my workshop making things ever since, and the covid lockdown was the perfect time to make some new videos, trying to pass on some of what I've learnt. So if you're interested do try my new 'Secret Life of Components'
These old films were remastered and upscaled by Norman Margolus from a 1987 PAL tape made directly from the 16mm print, using machine learning software from Topaz labs. Commentary added in Feb 2021.
View all 18 episodes of the series and read about their background on my website:
www.timhunkin....
The videos are also here @ / timhunkin1

[@jagboy69]

Still like the warm glow of the incandescent bulb.

[@nathanlucas6465]

Particularly with Christmas lights. Far nicer than the modern led sets

[@jagboy69]

@@nathanlucas6465 Exactly! I'm that one energy wasting guy on my block with gas lanterns on my house!

[@jtveg]

No way, that is just a bias due to it being what you are used to. Had you had been raised with bright white sparkling looking Christmas tree lights and then 40 years later dull yellow lights were introduced you'd be thinking they looked dull and boring. Not at all representing the spirit of Christmas. I don't like those unreliable things at all, where 1 bump destroys the whole string (even though they were designed to basically short a failed lamp keeping the circuit going but only brighter). No such issue with LEDS.

[@Chrisamic]

@@jtveg Modern LED strings tend to be overrun, which causes them to (shock, horror) fail in a short amount of time. Next time you have a failed LED "bulb" open it up and you'll find one or more of the individual LEDs with a black spot in it. That's the failed one. Put a blob of solder over it to short across it and the bulb will starting working again, but even brighter and with an even shorter remaining life. The electric light bulb industry just does not want you to stop buying light bulbs. It's possible to put in more LEDs and run them at lower current individually for the same light output. Google Dubai lamps, and then go and watch Big Clive's investigation of them (and subsequent experiments on how to make the light bulbs sold almost everywhere else last much longer). Perhaps it's hard to see how they could have made the CFL units actually last the 8000 hours they promised, so maybe they did their best there (only maybe, as I've become rather cynical about the whole thing) but the current short life span of the LED light bulbs is nothing short of money grubbing manipulation of the market. As you surmise, LED light bulbs should last almost forever, but in actual fact most tend to last less than their incandescent counterparts even if they do use less energy while doing so. The best house lighting I've found is the flat panel rings used in oyster lights. The LEDs tend to not be overrun, so they simply don't fail. The difference is that they are made by electronics manufacturers who specialise in putting components onto circuit boards, rather than "light bulb" manufacturers like Osram, Phillips etc.

[@jtveg]

@@Chrisamic Yes, I totally agree and I have also seen the video on the Dubai Lamps on BigClive's channel.

[@bobbymelbourne4502]

There's something magical about the lighting and the 16mm print which makes these visually interesting. Not to mention the animations.

[@vinylarchaeologist]

Agree, and was about to say the same. This series benefits immensely from having been shot on 16mm, and nowhere more obvious than this episode. Not even modern digital film cameras are able to capture the colour detail in those bright lights.

[@Watchmaker_Gereon-Schloesser]

In my opinion Tim should make copies from these originals again in 16mm as a back up. Film last much longer than any digital stuff. PROVEN! Best would be a copy on polyester basis film which is today normally used in copy works. Unfortunately these copy works are getting fewer. (I can recommend ANDEC in Berlin) Kodak made just ~5 (?) years ago a Dia-Film the Ektachrome 100ASA in E6 process. I hate that they still used a tri-acetate basis for this (lasts only 150 years due to the vinegear syndrome). THE MAIN REASON SOMEONE IS FILMING TODAY is that it is LASTING. I film 16mm and 8 & Super 8mm at minimum every 2 years 2 reels (100ft each)

[@gotsm9959]

This man is fearless. Playing with high 5+ kilowatt welding equipment+ molten steel with bare hands.

[@puciohenzap891]

*Put that bloody penguin out!* :))))))))))))) Probably the funniest animated part from the whole series.

[@MikeLagasse]

Love these remastered episodes, thank you

[@jamesportrais3946]

Tim is a wonderful guy - I remember watching these episodes several decades ago when CRT meant cathode ray tube :-p

[@MrAsBBB]

I’ve probably said it before but this series made me an engineer!

[@frankowalker4662]

Could'nt stop laughing when Rex let go of the 'floating' light bulb. :)

[@agreavette6450]

As a child growing up in northern Ontario Canada, there were not many channels to watch. I distinctly remember watching this and thoroughly enjoyed it enough that it ended up, pushing me towards becoming an electrician. Still enjoy re-watching these episodes.

[@railgap]

When I was 16 or so, I removed carbons from old-fashioned, basic carbon-zinc D cells (hard to find the original, non-"alkaline" cells these days!) and, placing my mother's electric iron in series, I made my first carbon arc lamp. At first I made very sketchy smoked glass lenses, but after a year or two I bought welder's goggles. I never got around to making a carbon feeding mechanism, tho I fooled around with those and with a gas jet / lime-light many times as a young adult.

[@davidroyer5049]

My mother's two brothers tried this same stunt back in the thirties but they forgot the electric iron. My grandfather had a few things to say about all the electricity in the house going out!

[@encouragingthings]

Loved these as a kid, still re-watching them today, but I have a new respect and admiration for the phrase "Put that bloody penguin out." Thank you Tim.

[@cvbabc]

There's something magical about Secret Life of Machines too Tim. It's why the show is still so fun to watch as well as the new content you've created. This quasi intimate relationship between two strangers, the watcher and watched fascinates me. It's a connection that can last a lifetime.

[@TheChipmunk2008]

RIP Rex, and thank you Tim

[@KirstyTube]

Love the Welsh accent on the penguin light holder 😂 reminds my of my grandmother 😂🤣

[@I967]

These should be in every man's YT home page and recommendations, not that drivel they are pushing onto us.

[@puciohenzap891]

Yes but we are in the minority, the 'less clever ones' are in majority and want that drivel. If not, it wouldn't 've existed.

[@th-pw8pn]

The lack of contrived sensationalism and presentation style make this much more informative and easy to absorb than the vast majority of modern TV shows... There are enjoyable contemporary channels as well though, I do like a bit of AvE, Lindybeige, and Edd China too!

[@TheAlps36]

Netflix should take it up

[@johnsmith7676]

@@TheAlps36 Netflix is shite... Run by the same dregs that run hollywood, youtube, and the rest of this degenerate matrix.

[@SpacewolfDan]

exactly not the gaming and lifestyle drivel

[@pablofederico1978]

I have a nice memory about this episode, I was on my 4th year of high school (1995), the class vas electronics, and for a reason that I dont recall, the professor asked if anyone knew how halogen lamps works, and I answered telling what I saw in this episode a few years before, he was surprised and asked my how I knew this! I answered that I saw in in TV on a show called "the secret life of machines". Amazing episode!

[@colinduffin7776]

The 'Lighting Industry Presentation' at around 17.50 using an overhead projector is quietly one of the most amazing moments in the film. Such a suddenly obsolete and forgotten proto-powerpoint technology! At the same time, the crane shot at The End is one of the greatest shots ever broadcast.

[@Miata822]

You might be interested to know that there was an agreement called the Phoebus cartel stretching way back among tungsten light makers to limit the life of their bulbs. A tungsten light could last forever but they were engineered to fail. This, of course, ensured an ongoing business for bulb makers. Today that seems to be a thing of the past with LEDs, or it did until LED light makers began reducing the number of LED chips in bulbs and driving the LEDs harder. This produces excess heat in the chips and their nearby electronic controls, shortening their life. It is possible to alter LED bulbs if you are handy with a soldering iron and can change out a capacitor. The "Big Clive" KZbin channel goes into some detail about this. I love how each episode has a fun ending.

[@jamesportrais3946]

I recall my parents telling me how absurd this got - you'd screw in a fresh bulb and it would ping out after maybe half an hour. Meanwhile: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centennial_Light#:~:text=The%20Centennial%20Light%20is%20the,the%20Livermore%2DPleasanton%20Fire%20Department. My father during the 1960's was a senior electrical contractor working for Siemens. He related to me a tour of the Ford Dagenham site. The two "rooms" of greatest interest contained in one; the motors of competitor cars and in the other, the bodies. The motors were ran indefinitely until destruction, and the bodies were subjected to a serious pounding by hydraulic rams until they fell apart. Although they obviously learned a lot about the relative dynamics and material wear, what purpose did they intend? To make theirs about the same. A properly maintained "Farina" Morris Oxford or Austin Cambridge would easily do 250,000 miles if properly maintained - nah; that's no good if you're trying to sell stuff. 100,000 miles then break - that was the new target. The process of galvanization has been known since the 17th Century, yet it took until the 1990's to transfer to automobile construction. Detroit planned a 5 year lifespan, and anyone who lived through the 70's and 80's knew the rot-boxes produced. Hell, 30 years ago as a kid I had a thriving business filing out and filling holes in peoples cars. This inescapable ubiquity of planned obsolescence perhaps hits the new householder more than anyone. You buy a washing machine, a dryer machine, a dishwasher, a fridge, a freezer and they all suddenly screw-up shortly following their warranty period, which is usually within a 6 month period of each other. Nice... Once upon a time, you could almost completely dismantle a Morris Minor with a half-inch spanner and a few expletives. It now costs a VW service centre upwards of $1/2million dollars to properly equip. These cars are not designed to be reliable; that wouldn't make money. This is the true resistance against electric cars - there is very little to go wrong. Unless you _make_ them go wrong.

[@kenhukushi1637]

You can buy LED that last as long as they are supposed to, if you are king of Dubai.

[@Garbaz]

It's really a shame about that continuing with LEDs, it's not even like the LED chips themselves contribute much to the expense of the bulb. Especially considering all the other electronics that are in each bulb, which just get thrown in the bin as well, just because one of the LED chips burns out.

[@frogz]

@@kenhukushi1637 or you can modify the cheap 1s by changing out a resistor or 2, bigclivedotcom has info on dooby lamps(diy dubai lamp)

[@tangibleblockofwisdom6386]

@@jamesportrais3946 a half inch spanner, and a few expletives. hehe! Interesting info

[@patriciap1214]

The one you did with refrigeration was really good and as things are old do come back now everybody is using ammonia, refrigeration, and CO2 and natural refrigerant so how things changed him thank you very much for putting all this back on it’s great

[@Muonium1]

This was my absolute favorite episode as a kid. The section showing how Geissler tubes work and how the different phosphors combine to convert the UV of the mercury discharge to visible light was so amazing to me. Incidentally, Alec who has a channel on here called Technology Connections and who I think of as carrying on the torch of exactly the kind of technology explanation videos people like Tim pioneered in this series decades ago, has just put out a fantastic in-depth video on gas lantern mantles and how they work that's definitely worth a watch. I do wish someone would do a video on candoluminescence specifically though, it's quite a strange and nonintuitive mechanism of light production that's poorly explained in the literature.

[@greenbanana311]

I enjoy Technology Connections as well. Alec does an excellent job creating thoughtful and well researched video presentations about so many of the different technological components that are so ubiquitous in our daily lives. The average person may remain uncurious about them, but for those lucky enough to find his channel, they are rewarded with thoroughly entertaining and wryly humorous explanations.

[@greenbanana311]

I enjoy Technology Connections as well. Alec does an excellent job creating thoughtful and well researched video presentations about so many of the different technological components that are so ubiquitous in our daily lives. The average person may remain uncurious about them, but for those lucky enough to find his channel, they are rewarded with thoroughly entertaining and wryly humorous explanations.

[@liam3284]

There were a few more in the 1980's and 1990's. They used to air on ABC Education. Now long gone thanks to funding cuts.

[@toml.8210]

I like them all, as it gives a sort of summation of the whole of the history of inventions and inventing, that no one man just suddenly "invents" a complete device. the entire world plays a part in most evreything.

[@toml.8210]

They are ALL my favourites.

[@JamLeGull]

I wonder if Tim has seen the Technology Connections channel, particularly the videos on oil lanterns.

[@TheChipmunk2008]

Not sure but the reciprocal is certainly true

[@matthewlawrenson3628]

If Alec ever did half the stuff shown here, his videos would be twice as long due to the disclaimers and warnings.

[@samchapple6363]

1980s calling my friend

[@toml.8210]

I have all 3 Connections series and the "Day the universe Changed" series as well.

[@WDCallahan]

Oh my... The sound of that poor old vacuum pump!

[@francistheodorecatte]

my old (1960's vintage) vaccuum pump sounds identical, and pulls more vaccuum than a modern pump. it's just that modern pumps are a lot quieter. :)

[@imranahmad2733]

Heat from tungsten lamps used in traffic lights used to keep the snow melted off the lighting assembly, when new LEDs bulbs where used at first the signs used to clog up with snow until they fitted heaters with temperature sensors in.

[@beautifulsmall]

on a similar note i have heard the more modern diesel warships couldn;t operate in the far north as the decks will ice up and topple, steam ships could use steam hoses to blow offf the ice and operate further North. And coal/ town gass was so oily it sealed its own leaks, when north sea oil gass came along it dried out all the joints and leaked.

[@d3nza482]

That is not true. One - due to protective visors on top of the lights, for traffic lights to be occluded by snow, wind would have to blow that snow directly into the light for an extended period of time. We call such an event a blizzard. AKA that time when you shouldn't be on the road. Unless you want to die. Snow that does gather that way will melt as long as the traffic light remains operational. Because... Two - LED lights DO produce heat. They just tend not to produce it in the IR part of the spectrum like incandescent bulbs do. In fact, per watt, LEDs produce far more heat than incandescents - up to 85-90% of energy used by an LED gets converted to heat, whereas an incandescent bulb will convert only about 10-15% of the energy used into heat. But it will shunt as much as 80-85% of energy into invisible IR. I.e. A 100 W incandescent bulb will produce about 1600 lumens of light and some 10-15 W will be wasted as heat. For the same amount of light one would need an LED of about 20 W, which would be wasting about 17-18 W as heat - more than the equivalent incandescent bulb. The reason incandescent bulbs are much hotter is all that IR light that gets wasted BUT which still heats up the surrounding air as it radiates from the bulb. But back to snow not melting... 1 Watt = 859.85 Calories per hour. 1 Calorie is the amount of heat needed to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water to 1° Celsius - AKA above the melting point. A traffic light using 8-15 Watts will waste 7-13 Watts as heat, AKA it will melt some 6-11 kilograms of ice per hour of operation. That would be a block of ice 10 centimeters long, 10 centimeters wide - and 60 to 110 centimeters high. Three - but people are stupid. So, there ARE such things as LED traffic lights with heaters built in (because stupid people demanded them and we all know that stupid customers are the best buyers of unnecessary stuff) - but practically no one uses them. Cause it took years for them to be created, as no one actually needed a more expensive, energy wasting LED traffic light. Engineers designing LED traffic lights being good at math and stuff, unlike people worrying about snow not melting when heated - they never thought to design a version for morons. Silly engineers. In the mean time, all those municipalities that did switch to LED traffic lights figured out that they don't need heating their LED lights to melt the snow - and they never needed to replace the LEDs they got the first time. Cause unlike incandescent bulbs - LEDs last a LOT longer. And use far less energy.

[@Vincent_Sullivan]

@@d3nza482 I agree with you that LED lights do produce some heat. Measurement of the lumens of *visible* light produced per watt of power consumed will show that LED lights are much more efficient than incandescent lights. I do not think it reasonable to include the infrared radiation produced by incandescent light bulbs as "light" in your calculations because it is invisible to the human eye and thus of no use to humans as light. This fact tilts the efficiency contest much in favour of the LEDs. There is also a significant error in your calculations of how much ice can be melted per hour by the 7 to 13 watts of waste heat you assume are created by an LED traffic light. You state that "1 Calorie is the amount of heat needed to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water to 1 degree Celsius - AKA above the melting point." This is not a correct statement. A correct statement would be: "One calorie is the amount of heat that needs to be added to or removed from 1 gram of liquid water to increase or decrease the temperature of the water by 1 degree Celsius provided that no phase change of any of the water is taking place." This quantity is called the "specific heat" of water. Snow is frozen water, basically particles of ice. To melt 1 gram of water ice at a temperature of 0 degrees Celsius to 1 gram of liquid water at 0 degrees Celsius requires the adding of 80 calories of heat to the water. This quantity is known as the "latent heat of fusion". During the melting transformation the temperature of the water will remain at 0 degrees Celsius. The process is reversible. Freezing liquid water into ice requires the removal of 80 calories of heat per gram from the water. This quantity is known as the "latent heat of solidification." Again, the temperature of the water remains at 0 degrees Celsius during the transformation from liquid water to ice. The heat added to or removed from the water is called "latent heat" because it does not result in a temperature change of the water. Instead, the heat causes a "phase change", which is a physicist's way of saying the water is either melting, freezing, vaporising, or condensing. The error in your calculation is that you have not allowed for the latent heat of fusion of water, thus your calculations are in error by a factor of 80. Seven to 13 watts of heat over 1 hour represent 6,018.95 to 11,178.05 calories of heat which will be capable of melting 75.24 to 139.72 grams of water ice per hour if 100% of the waste heat is added to the ice. Most traffic lights have 3 illuminated areas (red, green, yellow) which are illuminated only one at a time. The waste heat is shared among these 3 areas with typically the yellow getting the smallest share because it is only illuminated for a brief period in each light cycle. This means that the yellow light will have only a small fraction of the ice melting power available to it and will be at greatest risk of being obscured by snow. The bottom line is that the problem of traffic lights being obscured by snow is a very real problem and must be taken care of appropriately. I am a Canadian living in the land of ice and snow so I have seen early LED traffic lights obscured by snow before the problem was properly addressed. Incidentally, the latent heat condition also occurs when liquid water is boiled. To boil 1 gram of liquid water into steam 540 calories of heat must be added to the water. This quantity is known as the "latent heat of vaporisation". To condense 1 gram of steam to liquid water 540 calories of heat must be removed from the steam. This quantity is known as the "latent heat of condensation". In both cases the temperature of the water/steam will remain at 100 degrees Celsius as the phase change takes place ASSUMING the pressure is maintained at 1 atmosphere which is 14.7 pounds per square inch or 101.325 kilopascals or 760 mm of Mercury in a barometer. The boiling and condensing temperatures of water are strongly influenced by the pressure applied to it. If the pressure is higher or lower than 1 atmosphere the water will still boil or condense and require 540 calories per gram to do so. Assuming the pressure is steady, the temperature will not change as the process takes place, but the temperature will be different from 100 degrees Celsius. Also incidentally, once water undergoes a phase change to ice or steam its specific heat changes. The specific heat of ice is about 0.5 calories per gram per degree Celsius. This means that adding or removing 1 calorie of heat from 1 gram of water ice will change its temperature by 2 degrees Celsius. The specific heat of steam is about 0.48 calories per gram per degree Celsius. This means that adding or removing 1 calorie of heat from 1 gram of water steam will change its temperature by 2.083 degrees Celsius.

[@Vincent_Sullivan]

(Continued Comment) There are also a few other small errors in your work. You properly use capitalisation for the SI (International System of units) unit "degrees Celsius" as this unit is named after a person (Anders Celsius) so it is a "proper name" and thus capitalised. Oddly enough, the SI unit "watt" for power, even though it is named after the person James Watt, is NOT capitalised and should be written as "watt". Only when abbreviated (or used as the first word in a sentence) are the units named after people capitalised so it would be correct to use "W" as the abbreviation for watts. I agree this makes no sense, but this is the way the SI system is defined. Unfortunately you also capitalised the unit "Calorie". This is incorrect. It is true that the unit "Calorie" does exist and it does refer to a quantity of heat but there is a difference between a "calorie" and a "Calorie". The "calorie" is a unit used in physics and thermodynamics and is the amount of heat that will change the temperature of 1 gram of liquid water by 1 degree Celsius. The "Calorie" is a unit used in food science and is the amount heat energy liberated by a food item when tested in a calorimeter. The ratio between the two is a factor of 1000. One Calorie is equal to 1000 calories. For this reason, a Calorie is sometimes called a "kilocalorie" or a "large calorie" to distinguish it from the calories used in physics and thermodynamics. When you look at the label on a food item and it lists the number of Calories in the food it is talking about kilocalories or large calories. Confusing the two units will obviously result in an error in calculations by a factor of 1000! Isn't science wonderful! Just so many subtleties to confuse a person! Unfortunately, it is important to get these details correct or another person reading your work may not understand it properly or it may lead to errors in calculation. d3nza, I would like to congratulate you for attempting to do a mathematical analysis of the ice melting capabilities of the waste heat of LED traffic lights. Not many You-Tubers would have the courage, incentive, and inquisitiveness to do so! It is so nice to see an intelligent comment like yours where you tried to work out the factors of the situation logically to justify your conclusions. This is how science and engineering are done! Unfortunately you got caught by an oddity of the physics of water. It pains me a bit to point out your errors when you have tried very hard to do a proper scientific analysis of the situation, but if we are going to do science here, we need to get it correct. In fact, posing a hypothesis/ conclusion and having others check and/or test your work is how science eventually resolves a clear picture of the truth of a subject. In writing all the stuff above I am NOT trying to ridicule you. I am trying to further your knowledge so that the next time you need to deal with some of the physics of water you will have more understanding and be better prepared to develop the correct calculations. I hope you will keep at it, keep learning, and continue to elevate the level of the KZbin comment discussions. It was my privilege to respond to your comment! Disclaimer: I am not a physicist or a thermodynamicist. My training is as an electronics / electrical engineer. If there is a real physicist or thermodynamicist in the crowd I would appreciate a critique of my work. After all, I have a lifetime of experience in sometimes getting things wrong!

[@quantumleap359]

Thank you Tim for spending the time and effort to remaster the episodes and visiting with us at the end of each.

[@PowerScissor]

I also was the poor fool who spent a fortune to switch my life over to compact florescent lights only to realize they did NOT deliver their promised life and were not well suited to post life recycling. Was an expensive lesson.

[@toml.8210]

The part with the prism and the spectrums reminds me of high school, when we duplicated the Michelson-Morley experiments, and we shot a laser beam all over the school hallways! We figured it was about 1.2 km long, back to the laser!

[@skivvy3565]

2:20 “I’m Trying to go to sleep, *put that bloody penguin out.* ”

[@nicklutz61]

I love that "trick" bulb that Rex had floating mid air! These are the best. Thank you Tim for reviving them in HD.

[@chrisgurney2467]

So glad you mentioned Joseph Swan :D

[@KOTYAR1]

Very much amazing. I'm very glad Alec from Technology Connections recommended these to me

[@SlyPearTree]

I'm very glad that your house did not catch on fire, that kitchen looks very cosy. I've experience gas lighting when I was young at a relative's chalet that did not have electricity, they also had a gas powered refrigerator. I was amazed by both technology. CFL do last much longer than incandescent lights unless they're in emplacement like recessed ceiling lights where the heat is trapped and damaged the electronics. I bought CFL years ago before LED were popular and affordable and I've yet to change one. The manufacturers are at fault for not divulging that some emplacements are inadvisable.

[@fliedaway]

I vividly remember watching this episode as a kid. Making the wire glow with an old arc welder was brilliant, my Dad was a welder at the time and I remember him frantically flapping his arm to stop the welding rod from sticking as he was trying to strike an arc, the opposite of what you two were doing here : )

[@toml.8210]

I have the whole series on DVD. Unfortunately, the kids think it's boring, and go back to playing on the 'smart' phones, and don't realize where theat phone has its roots.

[@Aengus42]

Nice one Tim! One of my favourites. It'll go just right with me crunchy nuts! Edit: You're right about the light from a gas mantle. The process of installing one as it burns away leaving a gossamer lattice of ash that transforms the gas flame into a light that must've seemed almost magical to the early adopters! It's invariably stormy weather that causes a power cut and I also use a camping Gaz light so i associate that lemon/lime hued light & the gentle roar of the gas jets with being safe & cosy whilst the storm rages outside the kitchen window or outside the tent.

[@rustymotor]

I wonder what health risks were associated with the ash from gas mantles, they contained radioactive Thorium to produce the bright light. I have a lot of the radioactive mantles, interesting items to place near a Geiger counter to demonstrate the radioactivity.

[@toml.8210]

If i remember correctly, the silk netting is impregnated with Strontium.

[@Grateful.For.Everything]

Lol, the penguin candle joke was brilliant!

[@NiHaoMike64]

The part about Edison getting models to wear the lights as advertisement reminds me of how my friend Naomi Wu would make wearable LED projects as a form of art.

[@BlankBrain]

He also electrocuted an elephant to "prove" that AC was more dangerous than DC. He was an evil man.

[@sclogse1]

Speaking of the Eye And The Brain, I highly recommend the book, Proust Was A Neuroscientist. It showcases examples of various artists in print and painting who were actually exhibiting what science discovered decades later about the process of vision and comprehension. For instance, there are more neurons going back to the eye from the brain than from the eye to the brain. Examples from painters and writers like Cezanne, George Eliot, Proust and Gertrude Stein display their intrinsic understanding of the chemical processes of comprehension. A very fascinating book. We do fill in the blanks.

[@melm4251]

thanks for this recommendation, i'm going to buy it right away!

[@RichardWilliamLawson]

And the giant wooden nut and bolt 🎉 the dang theme song and the whole bit is just amazing - Well done from Tx

[@UXXV]

Loving the add ons at the end Tim. You are fantastic!

[@SierraNovemberKilo]

Its just so delightful to see these films & the extras at the end. Bravo.

[@Landrew0]

I loved the original series, and it's a treat to see it back in remastered form, except for the animated features, which I never cared for.

[@HughsScamProducts]

Thanks Tim, I wish I new about this series growing up in the States. I still enjoy the heck out of all the episodes now. The insights at the end with you are also great

[@jeremytravis360]

I worked in a lighting shop for a long time. I guess I should say it was an illuminating experience.

[@5roundsrapid263]

I had forgotten this episode, but it soon all came rushing back. It was the most impressive one on me by far. Wonderful to see it again!

[@redwolfpiping5701]

I love watching your shows, they were before i was around, but i love mechanics and mechanical gizmoes

[@nathanlucas6465]

At the end you mention about how compact fluorescents didn't live up to their claimed lifespan. I've still got a couple of the original Philips SL Prismatic cfls (the ones that look like they're in a jam jar) and they still work as well as they ever did. The colour is much warmer than more modern ones, but the warm up time of nearly 20 minutes can be annoying!

[@DanafoxyVixen]

I have a few SL's too and they still work a treet

[@mc_cpu]

It's mainly the cheap electronics that give up. Although I had a tube where the phosphor coating flaked off too.

[@AnokkyPromotions]

the quality of these remastered versions is outstanding. thansk tim :D

[@Dave5400]

Put that bloody penguin out! Yes sir, Mr. Hodges sir.

[@mikelemon5109]

They don't make such good TV series now days unfortunately. Great one!

[@rjmun580]

Entertaining and educational. Loved the `cartoon` characters. The painting at 3:17 is titled Greenock Dock by Moonlight by the Victorian artist John Atkinson Grimshaw.

[@nigelcarren]

"It's nice when there are no men about isn't it!" Speaking as a man, I agree 100% Thank you Tim. Another informative, thought-provoking thoroughly charming float downstream. BRAVO and best wishes from a fellow maker of 'things' 🏆🇬🇧

[@thepassenger5087]

Just found out this series. Really informative and entertaining to watch! Deserves more views 👍👍

[@unmanaged]

Tim ... Thanks for all you do

[@AstrosElectronicsLab]

And let's not forget about the introduction of HID (high-intensity discharge) lights that are now used in some, not all, car headlights.

[@skivvy3565]

Miss ya Tim. Will keep looking for updates when winter rolls around again

[@sehnsucht9206]

Such a great find...this gives me a chance to thank Tim for the original episodes of The Secret Life of Machines. I watched and appreciated all of them in the early 90s. Now with the remasters it gives me a second chance to enjoy them all over again and also the new Secret Life of Components. Thanks again Tim for your great work!

[@Fifury161]

I loved the series back in the day and enjoy revisiting them now! I reckon you missed a trick by not including your gas lights in the split spectrum test! Thanks for sharing these!

[@gs425]

It's good to hear you say what I've been telling people....low energy lights don't really save energy. In the uk we need heating for most of the year. The heat from the bulb warms the house and reduces the amount the heating system uses. Therefore they only save energy in the summer. But in the summer we hardly have the lights on anyway.

[@gregg281261]

Hi Tim, thanks for shining a light on a fascinating topic. Why are you not ‘Sir’ Tim, for services to education? Love your work. Gregg, Australia

[@MrAsBBB]

Between Tim, Rex and the Christmas lectures I had a great childhood! Thank you!

[@cirebyte7588]

I remember watching Richard Gregory on 'the sky at night' with Patrick Moore, at Selsey beach. He was explaining the 'big moon' optical illusion.

[@pyropenguin]

i could sit and watch this channel for hours and hours. i love the style and the music. thank you for posting all these. the world is a better place for having it! :D

[@mattcy6591]

I love these remasters and the commentary afterwards. Keep it up!

[@smadaf]

28:20. I have two compact fluorescent tubes I started using in 1999. They still work.

[@rondo122]

Great work, another masterpiece of yours!

[@abdillahideheye2748]

thank you this channel is so useful than anyother channels

[@Rick-O-Shay60]

Always a pleasure to learn something new, even if it is something old. Thank you Mr. Hunkin.

[@techno8870]

Thank you!

[@michaelmakemore633]

Thanks Tim and Rex! Masters of bodge!

[@skivvy3565]

14:00 I’m pretty sure high voltages in a vacuum actually give off xrays and other particles, would be interesting to find out if this experiment and other with normal house supply produce it as well

[@piconano]

I made a spectroscope using a webcam and a refraction grating film. Spectral Workbench is a great free open source software to run. You can see what a light is made of. Great to identify fake Sun lamps and UVC Leds.

[@piconano]

Google "i-Phos light Spectrometer" for the kit I built. 3D printed my own stuff and used a mailer tube for the body. Sold as a kit for 85 pounds in the UK, by Chris Wesley. He has a channel on KZbin (Chris Wesley), where he shows how it all works.

[@bryan3550]

Wow! Rex's thumbnails could surely have told some stories!!! 🙀

[@lefthandedspanner]

this series was broadcast when I was about 7 or 8, and I liked this this episode and the lift episode a lot now nearly 30 years on, and now I've got a much greater grasp of physics and chemistry, this episode has lost none of its appeal: it explains the science behind lighting in an engaging manner, and with exactly the right amount of detail, without dumbing it down or overcomplicating it one critical point left out was that tungsten filament bulbs have argon inside them to provide an inert atmosphere inside the bulb; if they were vacuum-sealed, the filament would eventually evaporate when heated to incandescence the use of tungsten for the filament, and the use of an inert atmosphere, was pioneered by Irving Langmuir, who won a Nobel Prize for it in 1911, becoming the first industrial chemist to win a Nobel Prize

[@SVanHutten]

Another superb episode. Great practical demonstrations and beautiful cinematography. Thank you for uploading!!

[@andypdq]

As you mention, incandescent light bulbs make fantastic and economical low power heaters. I have a number of unheated sheds with a water supply, the pipes freeze in the winter so I drain them, but where the supply comes through the floor before the stopcock cannot be drained, so is prone to freezing, it blows the compression fitting off the plastic pipe if it does. A small insulated box around the stopcock with a 20 W bulb in it stops it freezing, however cold it gets. Cheap to run and extremely effective!

[@toml.8210]

I like this series since it reinforces the fact that no invention is the result of a single man. The electric light, for example, wasn't just "invented" one day by Edison; it's really the result of the smaller inventions that build on the ones before it, cascading into the final, more useful invention, like the electric light, the telephone, video/audio tape recorder, etc. And in the case of the radio, some electrical inventions involve more mechanical parts than you'd think-tapping on the radio coheror to keep the filings inside from settling... One day, we'll have all that "green energy" and even faster-than-light space travel, but only after many hundreds or even thousands (or millions!) of related inventions have been discovered to make the end possible.

[@setharnold9764]

It's amazing how much good stuff you fit into 25-ish minutes.

[@bruce1437]

Wonderful

[@hullinstruments]

I hope you are doing well sir, I very much enjoy your videos and I haven’t seen you upload in several months. If you get the time or inkling… We would all enjoy more “secret life of components“… Or pretty much anything you’d like to show us we would enjoy! Your work has guided so many of us and influenced us into our careers and long lifetime of work. Thank you for your time and energy

[@ronblack7870]

i remember buying some compact flourescent bulbs at grainger in us way back . they were tubular straight not the swirl and when you flipped the switch they took like 1 or 2 seconds to come on. i used them in my apartment in a regular edison base lamp. they did actually last me 20 years using them for about 6 hrs/ day . they were in an open lamp with the base down. the swirly bulbs lasted very poorly but were cheap. the once that lasted 20 yrs cost about 25 dollars each so like 50 bucks in todays money.

[@SkunkMantraTechnoSkunk]

Just like the Philips SLs Bulbs very robust CFL from 80s early 90s,

[@randacnam7321]

@@SkunkMantraTechnoSkunk Or the Osram CFLs (and early Osram Sylvania after the 1994 buyup of GTE's lamp division) when they were USA made. I have some in regular use that are almost 30 years old. Same with the preheat choke ballast CFLs where the lamp is a separate replaceable element. They last ages.

[@justinquartermass9213]

With these guys, safety is not number 1 priority :D

[@beautifulsmall]

The Lenny Henry joke, the flat has centeral heating, a light bulb in the middle of the ceiling. Ladybird simple electronics 1979 had a light falshing robot that I built , mesmerised by the glowing filaments controlled by blue tubes , small lumps in wires and three legged sealed tubes. probably set me on a path. Electromagnetic spectrum. to understand these fundamental principles is a pleasure. The eye and the brain, fascinating, the layers of filtering and re-combination, to give a binary answer to can you spot all the traffic lights in these pictures. Love yuor work.

[@frogz]

THANKS AGAIN TIM!!! absolutely loving these, as good as any modern diy electronics channel on youtube that tears items down and reverse engineers them!

[@robinj.9329]

I'm told that, for the most part, before electric lights took over the night, folks got a longer and better night's sleep and were in general much healthier then we City folks of today!

[@greenbanana311]

People still routinely woke up in the middle of the night back then, as we do now. I wonder what they did without lighting back then, whereas today we'd go to the fridge and find something to eat, or look for something to read (or watch?)

[@dancoulson6579]

I love how Britain used to be. I'd love to go back to these days sometimes.

[@TheUltimateBlooper]

Yes, another one! 😍

[@electroshed]

Love these episodes! I'm an avid fan of neon, proper gas filled neon, It's always nice going to parts of Spain seeing it still used quite a bit over there, LED neon rope never quite has the same look about it :(

[@gs425]

Put that penguin out ! Hahaha

[@sugizotakuro]

i really liked all your videos. very informative with all those experiments. with the help of your channel, i managed to watch your backdated videos. :). hope you are well mr tim hunkin. sending regards from malaysia.

little bit mistake, Huprey Davey and Petrov is not first invertors of arc lamp, first was Frantisek Krizik.

[@zappababe8577]

I love those gas lights that you have! That's a great bit of history that still works well, so why would you ever get rid of them?

[@SpacewolfDan]

love love love this

[@gaveintothedarkness]

Now, can we get a Secret life of Electric Light Orchestra video?

[@TheJezzah]

My new favourite channel, Tim you are a legend.

[@JustinCase1021]

The real hero of these series is the lady that does all the voices for the animations.

[@liam3284]

Many compact flourescents were badly made and hated enclosed fixtures. I had some last 20 years, used in a timer each night. They were "rapid start" types though.

[@CraftMine1000]

Thanks for these Tim, just discovered your many creations just a few months ago, keep at it :D

[@account0199]

This is so charming!

[@TheGreatAtario]

CFL lifespan varies by orders of magnitude based on how they're used. I have a lamp that I never turn off, and that keeps a CFL running for maybe ten years at a go, but I have a motion-sensing outdoor fixture (constantly turning on and off all night) that I can't make last longer than a couple of months. Something to watch out for on LED bulbs is that they calibrate the circuit boards to overdrive the LEDs enough that they don't last either. There are videos here (notably by Big Clive) letting you in on how to modify these to last vastly longer for only a small sacrifice in brightness.

[@alec4672]

I live in northern Wisconsin and I'm yet to find a cheap bulb that last in my porch light other than an incandescent bulb. Same goes for the walk in cooler and freezer where I work. Most all of my bulbs are LED but incandescent definitely still has it's place through simplicity.

[@DK640OBrianYT]

"Put that bloody penguin out" :D

[@BoB4jjjjs]

Very interesting as usual ;-))

[@andyfeimsternfei8408]

Your the best, always have been!