How far we've come . .

How far we\'ve come . .

I ran into this in a antique shop over the holiday. How may lumens whould you guess?

Re: How far we\'ve come . .

50 watts, 250 lumens.

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i am guessing its size so i have to guess lumens id guess 5000? but very cool find did u buy it?

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Beamshots please! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif

Re: How far we\'ve come . .

Yup, couldn't pass it up. It's regular light bulb size and after a little research, it would seem to be a replica of something called a "death watch" lamp made at the Ford Museum in 1929. Beam shot! That's great.

Re: How far we\'ve come . .

Neat picture.

While I'd be tempted to light it up, I'd also be worried about breaking the filament and/or blackening the glass envelope.

The best way to bring that bulb up would be a variac. A regular household dimmer switch would place additional stress on the filament because of the distorted waveform that it produces.

Re: How far we\'ve come . .

It reminds me of the worlds longest burning light bulb. It's been burning for over 100 years.

Here's a cam watching it.

The Centential Bulb Website

Re: How far we\'ve come . .

[ QUOTE ]
wmpwi said:
I ran into this in a antique shop over the holiday. How may lumens whould you guess?

[/ QUOTE ]
I'd guess 15 lumens at best, just don't blow it up trying to fire it up. Get a variac that can dissipate at least 200 watts, set the voltage knob to 0 before plugging it in, turn the knob slowly, and stop when the bulb's filament is glowing yellow (not white!).

Re: How far we\'ve come . .

NICE looking lamp!

I've been watching "here and there" on eBay for one of those. There were some "Edison Light Bulb" replicas that were made and occasionally one can find them for sale.

If you have a "real" one - they can go for a "few" dollars for sure. Can't really tell from the photo if this was an "original" or not. The replicas had a little brass looking plate with some "Edison" info on it. One may or may not be able to see where the plate was attached.

Not an "Other Auction Notice" - but meant for reference:
"Link 1" & "Link 2".

Re: How far we\'ve come . .

That`s one of the 1929 anniversary lamps produced by General Electric for the "Lights Golden Jubilee" 50th anniversary of Tom Edison`s first commercially successful lamp. Functioning but otherwise decorative, it has a ~110v carbon filament that can be compared to original Edison-company sign lamps of the 1900s, which back then were rated 3CP. Now I`m not sure if that`s point candlepower, mean-spherical-candlepower or what. In the early days standards had yet to be set and there are several different ratings used by manufacturers in different countries.

In great shape with the box, gold label and everything they can be worth a couple hundred $$ but one like that, $25-50 would be more reasonable. Funny thing is, not long after they were released, the Great Depression started and as a result they did not sell as many as they would if the Wall Street Crash hadn`t happened. Made them quite rare for a while, though since Ebay, quite a lot have turned up.

There were actually many different styles of those lamps made over the years for different anniversaries, by different companies, the last in the 70s by GE had a plastic base with no electrical connection, but with an otherwise working (and removable to fit in a live socket for demonstration purposes) replica of the 1900s 16CP 2-loop carbon lamps. They are a bit of a pet interest of mine, I have several here. Currently:


That`s most of the common ones but there are still one or two notable omissions, especially the Westinghouse Stopper and the 1954 GE 75th-anniversary replica.

And here is a topic I started on the Antique Bulb Forums to gather more information about them, more details there, if anyone`s interested.


Nice find!

/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Re: How far we\'ve come . .

Sigman - thanks for those two Ebay links. The first is the GE 1959 one I have (a PDF version I made of the booklet can be read here by the way) but the second *could* be the elusive GE `54 lamp. Certainly is different to any of mine.

That one went on the "watch list". Purely for reference, of course!

/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Re: How far we\'ve come . .

That was the same site I used for reference as well, though you're contribution certainly covers any questions I would have had. Thanks.

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I have one of the bulbs shown at the far right of that pic. Found it at a Hamfest if I recall.