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Merry Christmas


Crusty Sills

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Merry Christmas from Down da Bayou.

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Sun is shining, birds are singing, turkey's in the oven, Christmas music on the wireless. Family's here, the day's just beginning.

Phil

I wish I lived next door to Phil, he seems to have the ability to repair anything and I love those old style street lamps.....

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Merry Christmas my dudes. I received quite a bit of car related stuff - Volkswagen socks, a H Van t-shirt, an I LOVE MY C1 t-shirt (bit modern but still great), a shirt with 2CVs on it and The Grand Tour’s A To Z Of The Car which surprisingly mentions about the Talbot Tagora (“the least curvy car ever made”). I also got a few things for the C1, a lid for the glovebox and a greyscale union flag roof sticker (which hopefully will look great on its Arctic Steel paintwork). Anyway, less of this modern talk. Happy Christmas all.

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Standard NEMA buckets! Still putting those things up new, but they're getting high pressure sodium lamps now instead of mercury.

 

Phil

 

had to double check I had clicked on the right forum when I saw someone else talking about street lights  :mrgreen:

 

if im not mistaken the one in your picture still has an old 1960s-1980s style BT28 shape mercury lamp in it?

 

those old Mercury lamps especially the Westinghouse life guard ones can go on for years up to 40 in some cases!

 

Have a Picture of my Clear 175W Westinghouse life guard lamp just after striking, in operation in my cheapo US "Yard-blaster" Light (Id love a Proper NEMA bucket)

 

post-25614-0-67903600-1545774813_thumb.jpg

 

and heres a video of the same light fixture this time with its refractor attatched and fitted with a Deluxe White  "/DX" Westinghouse life guard lamp :)

 

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Yup, early phosphors, any photograph comes out green. Lamp was put in '74 when this house was built.

 

 

Very cool :) im guessing as this is pre 1975, they are of the clear top type? (where the knob part of the BT shape is clear like the one in my video, i can tell for sure they would be Sylvania or Westinghouse lamps, as GE was the first to switch away from the BT shape in the mid 1960s with Sylvania being the last to switch away from the "Blown tubular" BT shape in the early 1990s on their mercury lamps, and the late 2010s! on their metal halide lamps)

 

as mercury lamps age regardless of Phosphor type, they will whats called "green out," as the arc tube blackens blocking the bluer to UV output and the phosphors degrade, the green mercury spectrum lines take over causing the light output to dim and go green in colour. so I imagine if they where fitted in 1974 they would be pretty green by now regardless of phosphor type.

 

but you are right the early coated mercury lamps which would of been the "/C" Colour corrected Magnesium Fluoro-Germanate phosphor type, do exhibit a greenish tinge even when new, there was also the /W "High output" lamps which had strontium zinc orthophosphate phosphor which was one of the first type of phosphors to boost efficiency over clear lamps, however its colour correcting properties where poor (/C managed to add more red to spectrum but at the cost of efficiency)

 

finally in the mid 1960s Sylvania invented the "/DX" Yttrium Vanadate Deluxe white phosphors which not only boosts the red content even more so then "/C" it also improves efficiency, obsoleting both the pervious /C and /W phosphors in one fell swoop, (making those older lamps a rare find these days, they where in the US offered along side /DX for a while as a cheaper option, but pretty much vanished by the early 1980s, in Europe they vanished pretty much the moment /DX hit the scene in the mid 1960s making European "/C" lamps very rare indeed, although funnily enough my only "/C" mercury lamp is a 1965 125W British made example)

 

its fun to geek out once in a while  :mrgreen:

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as in when the lamp is Lit and fully run up or when the lamp is off?

 

because if its purple when its off then it could be a Very rare Purple "/X" lamp, this is pretty much the only one I have seen: https://www.lighting-gallery.net/gallery/displayimage.php?pos=-3

 

but that would date the lamp at least to way before 1975

 

(unused /DX lamps can exhibit a very slight purplish tinge when fully run up, but this soon fades over use, and of course all phosphored Mercury lamps will light up a bright Red-orange colour at first before they run up to full operating temperature)

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Yeah Photographing Lamps is a fun art :)

 

going by that description that sounds like a normal DX lamp a fresh one at that, I wonder if the company maintaining the lights has a stash of NOS lamps somewhere :)

 

SOX fixtures are quite rare in the US but they do pop up every now and then, you could also import one from the UK and run it off the 240V from the cooker :) or do what a Lot of US lighting collectors do and build your own fixture, and drive the lamp off the right fluorescent lamp ballast  :mrgreen:  (its worth mentioning sadly that. Philips the last company making SOX lamps will be ceasing production in 2020 :( )

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