Archive
Tag "lighting"
Modern Mechanix
Issue: Feb, 1938
Posted in: History
Tags: , ,
Posted: 02/10/2008
2 Comments
Edison Memorial Bulb Ready (Feb, 1938)

While we’re on the topic of Edison, what better way to memorialize him than with a giant light bulb.

Edison Memorial Bulb Ready

A GIANT electric light bulb, 14 feet high, which will surmount the $100,000 Edison Memorial Tower at Menlo Park, N. J., in commemoration of the invention of the incandescent lamp by the famous inventor, has been completed. The bulb, in position atop the 150-foot tower, will also serve as an airways beacon.

The bulb consists of 164 pieces of glass cast in two-inch diamond patterns around a steel skeleton frame. The interior features 960 incandescent lights and a 24-inch reflector.

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Popular Mechanics
Issue: May, 1924
Posted in: Sign of the Times
Tags: ,
Posted: 01/28/2008
No Comments
Flood-Lights Revealing Beauties of Night (May, 1924)

Flood-Lights Revealing Beauties of Night

More than Twenty Millions of Dollars Spent in Year to Illuminate Outside of Nation’s Buildings

FROM the time primitive man stumbled about in the darkness with a torch to the modern electric age, human ingenuity, in banishing night by artificial illumination, has developed until today it has reached a brilliant climax in the art of floodlighting. Assembled in bat-teries a n d focused on towers, monuments and lofty skyscrapers, great masses of electric lights serve as an aid to advertising and to emphasize architectural beauty. Last year, it is estimated that nearly $20,000,000 were spent in the United States alone for flood-lighting equipment.

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Popular Science
Issue: Aug, 1930
Posted in: General
Tags: ,
Posted: 01/23/2008
No Comments
MAN-MADE LIGHTNING GETS POWER FACTS (Aug, 1930)

MAN-MADE LIGHTNING GETS POWER FACTS

ONE man controls the power of a million volts, in the new high-tension testing laboratory just opened by the Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Company at Manchester, England. A touch of his fingers releases a blinding inferno of electric flame from great copper balls suspended in the testing room.

Twelve-foot tongues of fire leaped to the ground from a great ball, hung on insulators, in the first demonstration, held recently. They were unleashed, at the turn of a wheel, from grotesque, mushroom-shaped condensers twenty feet in diameter that stored them. The operator was at a safe distance, for anyone near the balls would be killed instantly.

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Popular Science
Issue: Feb, 1947
Posted in: Photography
Tags:
Posted: 01/12/2008
1 Comment
Repeating Flash Systems (Feb, 1947)

Repeating Flash Systems

Time-savers for photographers are the two lamps above, in which manually operated cranks replace spent bulbs with new ones, moving the reflectors out of the way as they do so. Once the fresh bulbs are in place, the reflectors return to position. The top lamp was invented by E. B. Nobel and A. W. Seitz, the lower one by John J. Malloy. Both devices use a series of bulbs with bayonet-type bases, and their discharge switches can be operated either by hand or by synchronizing apparatus.

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Popular Science
Issue: Feb, 1932
Posted in: General
Tags: ,
Posted: 01/10/2008
3 Comments
BATTERY IN HEEL RUNS LIGHT ON SLIPPER (Feb, 1932)

BATTERY IN HEEL RUNS LIGHT ON SLIPPER
Created originally for a New York theatrical production, illuminated dancing shoes are now on the market. A small bulb on the tip of the shoe is illuminated by a dry cell battery concealed in the aluminum heel. It lights when the dancer kicks the heel on the floor, striking a switch, seen in the photograph below.

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Modern Mechanix
Issue: Aug, 1932
Posted in: Photography
Tags:
Posted: 01/05/2008
7 Comments
Synchronizing Photo Flash Lamp With a Camera Shutter (Aug, 1932)

Synchronizing Photo Flash Lamp With a Camera Shutter

THE difficulty of synchronizing the flare of a photo flash lamp with the click of the shutter is frequently encountered by enthusiasts of the camera art. There’s a way to overcome this difficulty, however, and that is by constructing the little gadget shown in the accompanying photo.

The contrivance consists of a flat type pocket flashlight battery mounted between two pieces of wood, on the top of which is affixed a common porcelain socket to hold the photo flash lamp.

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Popular Science
Issue: Jul, 1947
Posted in: Origins
Tags: ,
Posted: 11/03/2006
1 Comment
THROW-AWAY FLASHLIGHT (Jul, 1947)

THROW-AWAY FLASHLIGHT

Sealed inside transparent plastic, a tiny flashlight made by the Falge Engineering Service, Bethesda, Md., is intended to be discarded after its one cell is dead. Pressure on the plastic cover operates a switch. Produced primarily to carry an advertising message, like a packet of book matches, the lights are offered only to advertisers, in quantity lots, at a cost of approximately 26 cents each.

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Modern Mechanix
Issue: Mar, 1938
Posted in: General
Tags:
Posted: 10/31/2006
No Comments
Sliding Stock Room Flashlight (Mar, 1938)

Sliding Stock Room Flashlight

WITHOUT going to the expense of installing numerous fixed lights throughout length of stock room, illuminating interiors of long rows of deep drawers and bins may be done by stretching a wire overhead, parallel to shelving, and suspending a flashlight from wire, by means of sliding ring

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Modern Mechanix
Issue: Dec, 1931
Posted in: Automotive
Tags:
Posted: 10/16/2006
No Comments
New Glareless Auto Headlights (Dec, 1931)

New Glareless Auto Headlights

TAKING a hint from the eye shade made popular by Helen Wills Moody, Frank R. Dudley, of Fitchburg, Mass., has invented a glareless head light. Located on the cowl, as shown below, the shade stretches along hood to direct rays downward on roadway.

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Popular Science
Issue: Jan, 1948
Posted in: Useless Tech
Tags:
Posted: 10/09/2006
2 Comments
Corridor Traffic Light (Jan, 1948)

If the instruments are so delicate, why doesn’t she use a cart instead of carrying them all piled up like that. Plus the traffic light doesn’t do you a whole lot of good if you can’t see it because, uh, you’re carrrying a pile of delicate instruments.

Corridor Traffic Light
Wartime’s proximity fuse is regulating hallway traffic at General Electric’s Schenectady research laboratory. Above, the girl at left has been “picked up” by a microwave transmitting-receiving unit (A), operating traffic light (B). The girl at right, carrying delicate instruments, is warned by a red light that the corridor is not clear.

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