Lightswitch So GOOD They Made it ILLEGAL 

How does clickbait not get you banned?

I bet a blind man would disagree. Why would they need to have a light switch? For their guests of course. So turning off the sound on a light switch forces one to remember if it was in an upright position. Not to mention guests in other rooms turning them off/on, how is one blind man supposed to know?

@@soundspark I agree the "too quiet" part in the thumbnail is misleading. It makes you believe that the reason they are banned is strange, which is not true. However, I'm very glad I clicked.

@@Knulppage Of course I already knew it was because the element is a mercury switch.

@@soundspark I knew that I had these lights switches but I didn't know why they were quiet. I've never had experience with mercury switches but the concept behind it is simple.

I have a feeling at the time they were a nice upgrade. The feeling of the switch is so strange. Feels like a dimmer as you put it on or off, just the right amount of resistance.

Your dad was always special ❤

Yeah they are in my moms house to this day.

They were terrific.

My dad, meanwhile, installed X10 switches throughout the house in the 70s and 80s.

Well, i was thinking it would wear out like that. But strangely to comment that they last forever in the video. In any way. I would love a switch like this just for the hell of it.

Thanks for the expirience, I guess the guy in the video just doesnt have that so thats why he thought they would last forever

=CAN BE COUNTERED WITH SOME MAGNET THAT PULLS IN THE SWITCH WHILE IN "ON" POSITION SO IT'S ABOUT TO COVER ARCING RANGE ................ALSO IT'S POSSIBLE TO DO THE SAME LIGHTSWITCH BUT WITHOUT ANY MERCURY IN IT,ONLY 2 MAGNETS ON ON SND OFF POSITIONS,CONDUCTIVE ROLLERS ON SPRINGS AND CIRCLE SHAPED SWITCH SURFACE UNDERNEATH WITH A CONDUCTIVE PLATE......

Hmm .. not that i'm for a contest here - just a conversation, (I'm also not a chemist) and I sure may be wrong. That said. Wasn't hg used for decades specifically arcing as use as a rectifier? i suppose anything can be destroyed by misuse, and I suspect the powder may have been the electrode material rather than the mercury itself - although the little vial I have on the bench does appear to have some floating dull bits. Mercury was also used in high power contactors .. and may still be. i still wouldn't call (modern) spring contact switches as hands down superior though .. as the powers that be chince ever greater for the almighty dollar - even the name brands. Contact arcing is simply probability .. at least on a resistive load. 'Where' in the AC cycle that the throws are separated will determine severity with every switch click. All non hermetic mechanical contacts will arc. Indeed the rating of a switch is not the amount of power it can conduct while closed, but the amount that it can safely break some number of times determined by the build to cost vs. life expectancy. i suspect that most of these old switches were replaced in perfect working order .. wonder if we'll be able to say that in 2072 about the leviton just installed. An odd little aside because I have a glass of whiskey and it came to mind .. One interesting forgotten bit of mechanical contact tech were kettering ignition points: Able to break a 75 Watt eight Henry inductive load 400 times per second for over 1500 hours. yes, the condenser helped .. but that's actually a pretty impressive feat for a switch!

@@JimTheZombieHunter Yes, mercury arc valves are a really cool bit of kit: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury-arc_valve

So that thing in the video clicbaited us.

@@mine7172 not really, no.

@@mine7172 they are illegal because mercury is too bad for the environment

To be fair the thumbnail said "it was too quiet". It wasn't too quiet, it was the mercury.

The thumbnail did make it out too make us believe that

The sound is broken 😃

The sound is broken 😃

The sound is broken 😃

The sound is broken 😃

The sound is broken 😃

I enjoyed your story. Thank you. Now a question if you don't mind- I had a brand new Rheem Marathon electric water heater installed in my home last month. I noticed that it too is powered by 12 Guage Romex wire rising from the top of the heater to the bottom of the floor joists and ultimately to the electrical panel. There is no conduit or nipples around the Romex. I thought it a little strange, but it was installed professionally. It must be up to code, buy why no conduit surrounding the Romex? Thank you in advance for your answer.

@@243wayne1 It is illegal to install Romex inside a conduit. The sheathing on the romex inside of the conduit can cause heat build up. However, it is also illegal to install Romex that is not protected inside a wall or on the side of a rafter or joist. Free hanging Romex is a really bad idea. Depending on the size and recovery rate (element wattage), #12 may be sufficient, If the heater specifies 20 amp breakers.

@@scottbc31h22 Thank you Scott. I appreciate it.

@@scottbc31h22 This was a 30 amp breaker. The heater was rated at 24 amps if memory serves me. I replaced the 12 with a 10 gauge run and the connection from the J-box with an appliance whip.

They didn't understad how thw switch worked I guesse. 🤣🤣🤣🤣

Huh, maybe that's where the movie trope of flickering lights in an earthquake comes from, especially if these switches we're so common!

Oddly enough that's what I thought when he showed the switch's inner working.

@@Birch_ON *were

@@u2bear377 *weir

@@Birch_ON lights will actually flicker during earthquakes. This guy described it like they flickered a thousand times per second

I did it in 8th grade science class in the late 90's. Touching it is fairly safe as it isn't easily absorbed by the skin. The real danger is when mercury vaporizes and you breathe it in, which it does very little at room temperature. Most mercury poisoning is from it accumulating up in the body over a very long period of time or off-gassing when exposed to high heat.

People absolutely knew that it was dangerous back than It's just that people care a lot more about safety and the environment For example the death caused by car accidents per miles traveled has plummeted massively in the united states since the 1960's!

People knew, just like climate change was predicted for over a century, asbestos was a recognized threat for decades, every single cigarette ad from the 50s was going against scientific findings, and leaded fuel and CFCs were known to be dangerous from their very inception. Metallic mercury isn't very dangerous if handled quickly to minimize evaporation. The same vial's worth could be reused for educational purposes for ages. As long as the room is ventilated, only the teacher would be exposed to non-infinitesimal quantities.

@@MadameMinty you forgot to mention the lead that they put in gasoline. That one as well 😂

100% pure Mercury is a different story. A woman spilled two drops on her gloved hand and died from Mercury poisoning within two weeks.

As if they couldn't simply short the mercury switch

@@ranpatoamami7048 or just put a lighter to it lmao

@@TheWaynester101 Not as dumb as microwaving the thermostat, but still a bit dumb, they had to disassemble it anyway

Sounds military. Probably all generals by now.

And these are the people that make sure your jets don't fall out of the sky, ladies and gentlemen...

I was just thinking how much I loved the format and presentation style! The algorithm brought me here and the quality of this content made this an easy subscription for me. Technology Connections is like a luxurious Cadillac cruise, and this channel is like riding a motorcycle. Not as comfy, but way faster.

This is how informative videos should be. High information density. This tells me far more in a few minutes than I could learn from reading for a few minutes.

Actually yes I really assumed it was about to drag out the initial revelation for an hour and I was about to click out of it,, then I read you comment and looked at the video time and decided to just watch the whole thing!

Yeah Technology Connections is a bad case for that. His topics are so interesting…but I am NOT watching a half-hour long video on the history of a singular common object.

The problem of this video is that it's entirely clickbait and wrong in places.

careful not to break the mercury holder cause its elemental mercury which is very toxic and absorbs into your bloodstream

@@animeloveer97 elemental is probably the second least toxic form for mercury to be in when spilled. Basic salts being safest as they wouldn't make vapor or be impossible to clean, the elemental mercury does make fumes and gets stuck in the floor which means you need to pour like chlorine on it to turn it into salt and etc before you can go in the house again but you can stick your whole arm in liquid elemental mercury and have no problem. Organic mercury is the stuff that you touch for a split second and die.

Can I buy them off you please?? 🙏

Honestly, my feelings are confused 😶😐

the mercury in the switch was moved by the g forces and created the flickering.

I wired a mercury switch into an old bike I had. It went from the battery to a keyed switch to the mercury switch in the air box, to the horn. When I got off, I would lock the "Alarm". If anyone tilted the bike up, it would set off the horn until they put it back on the kickstand.

@@banata21 that is genius but also bad for the environment if you crash. :,D

A simple fix would be to redesign with a spring, but the environmental issues of mercury was most likely the reason for the ban.

@@terrafirma9328 mercury was banned for most electronics in Europe, manufacturers across the world just followed suit and shut down production rather then get banned from a possible future product...

Peter; the mercury was fully enclosed and isolated, even though you could create an arc it would be fully contained and safe. Well, it would waste energy by turning the switch into a UV light source but safe all the same. Mercury switches are still in service in manufacturing environments where explosive gasses can get into the atmosphere for excatly this advantage. Although my understanding is these are used in safety switches as light switches went to transistors.

@@terrafirma9328 yet at the same time they pushed everyone to buy cfl lights with it in them

Electrical switches were spring-loaded even before the silent mercury switches. Nor only does it prevent the switch being "half-closed" and arcing continuously, it also makes them open and close faster than if they were fully hand-powered, greatly reducing the time they will be arcing even in proper operation.

Hi, do you know the name of that vacuum cleaner or the company? I am very curious for quiet machines. Thx

@@martynewport I believe it was Kirby.

@@logicsoundinc I doubt it was Kirby, it would have to be something with an induction motor, which would make it a large machine, probably a canister style.

Similar to digital cameras. At first, they were completely silent, because of course they had no mechanical moving parts, and many people found that disconcerting. Manufacturers started having them play a camera shutter sound as a result.

That's kinda like how in soap/shampoo/cleaning liquids if they don't produce suds when you scrub with them people think they aren't working properly, when in reality the suds do nothing at all

Mercury Oral thermometers anyone?

I still have two Mercury thermometers till this day. One is to be used oraly, through the entrance. The other one is for the exit... If I only remembered which one was which...

@@timmy7201 You don't need to remember. The one with the bad taste is for the exit.

@@davemarm I lack a point of reference in how shit tastes. I could replace them for a fancy digital one... Problem being that those mercury ones bring back high-school memories, as they where easier to cheat using an external heat-source than those digital ones.

a switch is supposed to be clicky to prevent electrical fires the click is the light rapidly hitting the contact to keep it from sparking and melting if your contacts are sparking, you're going to have a house fire a clicky switch is a safe switch

it is a little unsettling how quiet it is tho

Yeah, the title is clickbait

They made it illegal because it would sell better than other company's switches

You can't sell batteries or need repairs of the light switch is too good!

Yep, actually their explicit purpose was the orientation sensing, hooking them as a switching element for stationary light switch or thermostat was rather a "subapplication". They had many uses, some old cars had them in trunk lid to sense its open position to switch the light. Those never suffered from contact corrosion issues.

I think the el-cheapo version of this sort of motion-sensing is done with a spring in a cage, the spring forming one contact and the cage the other. When it's jiggled, the spring momentarily contacts the cage and completes the circuit. I've seen it used in various toys, like lightsabers, so that when you swing them around, they make a noise.

@@dj1NM3 It is the post-mercury-ban version ;)

I believe it was called 'Le stick", and it was awful. The mercury switches were too sensitive and any motion at all had them switching randomly, making control impossible. The product failed pretty quickly. Mercury switches were popular though as were mercury relays, a big factor being reliability and no contact wear.

@@Oldbmwr100rs I also remember a review of some gamepad with mercury switches stating it had significant delay on reacting to the orientation change.

Dimmers uses an electronic component called a triac.

Which is also way safer than a mercury switch, at least in terms of poisoning lol. Electronics can start burning, and that is the worst case scenario

@@necrobynerton7384 yes but if mercury burns your dead

My grandparents had a dimmer like that also. Also, it was lighted like the switch shown in this video, but the switch itself was clear, rather than opaque. Neat stuff

that's just a variable resistor, nothing special

Love the little orange light, actually - apparently all that's installed in my grandparents house are GE Mercury switches like these, can't wait to get to flip one again now that I know

Back in the 70's I found (and bought) one of those old Copper Hewitt lamps at an old electronics surplus shop. It put out an amazing amount of light & I used it in my basement workshop for years. It gave of an odd color light, but it was easy on the eyes as long as you didn't look directly into it. I had it for a few years, and then the old ballast coils began to occasionally overheat & smoke sometimes. My folks made me get rid of it "before I burned the house down". - - (Which they were always afraid I was going to do with all my 'electrical experiments' during my high-school years)

@@sf-jim8885 Parents ruin everything, lol. No wonder nothing good gets invented anymore; cold fusion was probably achieved in 1974 but somebody's mother made them throw it out. 🤣

We still do XD

It was not the first mercury vapor lamp ever invented. It was the first to be commercialized. Many people experimented with mercury discharges even in the 1860s.

There’s an old light like that at a firehouse in Livermore, CA

@@RumHam5570 Unfortunately theirs isn't the same as that. You're speaking of a lightbulb that has been burning since 1908? But I'm not for positive. The toggle part of the light switch is what glows orange when 📴. But it's not a bulb. It's built into the switch as some type of forever light. It's been there since 1907 and never not worked

@@RumHam5570 that's nowhere close to what this video is about

Which is another good reason for that type of switch to be banned. The amount of arcing that would cause could start a fire.

Sound like a total over reaction, must be a blue town. That kind of mercury is actually not that dangerous. What makes it bad is inhaling the vapors.

@@billybassman21 Actually the most red part of the Texas oil field there is. Funny you assume though. You'd find it in seconds with a quick google search.

Uranium glass is really epic, and surprisingly safe. There’s very little in it (0.1%-1.5% IIRC) and it’s tightly locked in the glass unless you break it or put acidic foods on it, even so I don’t recommend drinking from them too often if at all (uranium is only weakly radioactive, and as long as it’s outside of you the alpha particles are stopped by your skin, uranium also has chemical toxicity which is probably doing a comparable amount of damage, in fact the radiation won’t even really penetrate outside the glass. Because of this it’s of comparable danger to lead glass… and cooler because it glows under a blacklite)

I have a green milkglass orange juicer that is made out of the radioactive glass, it glows brightly under a blacklight.

Aka My alone/drinking time has been inturupted by your new switch. This isnt AVE buddy lol.

If you hold the switch tightly with your hand covering it and ease it to its stop, it doesn’t make an audible noise. This life hack brought to you by joyriding, formerly 15-year-old me.

Actually, electrical switches were originally designed to make a loud clack*. Note that the mercury switches were explicitly advertised as silent, which indicates switches were known to be loud at the time the mercury switch came out. *Okay, TECHNICALLY the loud clack is a side effect, not the design goal. They are designed so the electrical contacts are always under spring tension so that when you turn it on or off, the connection is forced together or apart rapidly by that tension. This reduces arcing and extends the lifetime of the switch, as the spring can likely make or break the circuit faster than your hand even if you aren't moving it slowly because you're trying to be sneaky.

Murder she wrote

@@BillLaBrie bad, bad, bad idea. That's how you make fires.

😂

Much appreciated

In the seventies kids could get their feet measured by x ray machines. In the eighties there was a recession in the UK and you were lucky to have shoes that did not have holes in them. To preserve them you could use Scotchguard by 3M, now banned in its original formulation due to toxicity. In a parallel universe there are kids walking around with x-rayed feet atop mercury timebombs and wrapped in toxic chemicals. How I miss that parallel universe.

@@pdsnpsnldlqnop3330 late 40s - 80s was an insane time period, i wasn’t born in that era but from what i heard about it it must’ve been wild. They put toxic shit into literally everything

@@nevercommitsuicide They just did things they have ever have been done this way. Especially when you consider many of the people went through the world wars then having lead paint or having carcinogens in their tape maybe isn't that much of a concern. Also metal Mercury at room temperature isn't even that dangerous. Handling metal lead is probably more dangerous than mercury.

Not just the cost, but the inconvenience. I’ve tried to get rid of certain electronics before. Call 5 places and none actually take them, and no one will pick them up. Don’t have a way to dispose properly , or space to store on site. So you trash them since proper disposal takes several hours or isn’t even available within a reasonable distance.

Only a barbarian would throw an old switch to the garbage. As a radical collector and hoarder I take them home from the garbage.

ok "bill"

Yes. It's a new RU-vid ai reading your mind and suggesting videos.

@@Theydas ok "name"

Lol

Same, I used to play with the stuff, I even remember making a large type of Barometer at school using a large tray filled with mercury and a large test tube. Those were the days :)

Seems like everything from the old days ended up being bad for us. I used to have a sign that read.. Introducing the new hero of heating...ASBESTOS...

I came here to share the same memory of playing with mercury in school. Now I think it probably was part of that "survival of the fittest" thing..... 😁

@@SilverCymbal lol

@@bobmcl2406 I agree!

I was thinking the same exact thing.

Too funny. I did that as well, still kickin’ 😅

i remember those, like split lead shot and also doing the same :)

My grandmother told me that when she was young, she and the other kids would get a buzz from chewing the lumps of dried tar around housing construction. She made it to 74 but smoking took her out. Haven't tried any tar myself.

When I was a kid, I actually drank from a regular old garden hose. 😨

@@explorenaked Has a unique taste, don't it?

Why scared of having it if it's been in your house way before you were even thought of

Don't worry, metallic mercury won't cause you any harm as long as you don't let it get inside of your body through ingestion or a cut on your skin etc. You can find plenty of videos on youtube of people handling it with bare hands, check out "Cody's Lab" and his videos on mercury!

@@rifraf276 Right! The metal won't harm you if you touch it. I bet you're too young to remember the glass fever thermometers full of mercury..... for oral and rectal use. Yikes, as they say today

@@captaintrips2980 My parents had one, and I just used it under my armpit. You had to shake it if you wanted to reuse it so the mercury went back down. One day I was shaking it and I accidentally hit the tip containing the mercury on a table and it broke. We just cleaned it up and went about our days lol

Thanks for sharing your life experiences with us sir!

Not sure what you’re doing with your can openers but I have one that I’ve had for about 15 years and still works great. I got a different style one a couple years ago and it still works great. Now, I didn’t get them from the dollar store or anything like that but they weren’t top of the line either. About $10-$15 each and they last

@@plaid11 I've had 3 manual ones (1) dollar store, (1) Grocery Chain, (1) Amazon. All 3 similar style. I'd say probably the same one with different manufacturer names. All 3 bent and 2 the cutting wheel needed more force the more I used and if I remember the gear wheel that rotated the can ended up skipping which in turn caused me to use more force ending with a bent and misaligned opener. What's the name brand or manufacture name on yours for future reference? Thanks

Planned obsolescence is what we are all victims of. Everyday items not lasting like they used to is strategic, not just lousy componentry.

@@CJ2APEEP More bought More money. Yup

The human brain sure is funny. See, even though you fundamentally disliked the switches, youre now wishing you would have enjoyed them simply because of the new knowledge that they were "premium".

Yes now you know they are hazardous waste in case you do replace them

@@Boz1211111 yep, literally the *real* reason why they were banned, unlike the clickbait title suggests

yea no replacing them will be hella expensive, best to just keep them as long as they still work. maybe remove the plastic and bleach it with hydrogen peroxide, but don't screw with the other stuff.

@@windhelmguard5295 Yes I plan to keep them but you're right I need to brighten the white a bit on the switch.

When we replaced our ceiling fan we got a wifi enabled switch. I have never turned the lights or fan on with my phone before, but the switches are capacitive touch sensors behind a glass panel, besides the light turning on or off the only way you'd know you pressed them is the little LED in the glass which indicates the switch's position. They're pretty neat, I like them. They would definitely be a problem for people with limited sight though, there's zero tactile or audio feedback, you can't even feel where the switches are. They're just circles printed on the glass panel. Ideally, the buttons themselves would have some kind of raised or recessed edges so you could feel where they are, but the indicator LED makes pressing them in the dark a non-issue. Not the best option for everyone, but certainly ideal for someone who doesn't want to hear them. I like the sound of light switches (or at least don't dislike it at all) so I'm in no hurry to swap the rest of them over.

mercury itself isn't very dangerous as long as you're not actually eating it. mercury vapours and salts are dangerous as those can actually enter your body and do damage.

Like Crystal Gaile sang, don't it make one of my three brown eyes blue... I used to look forward to interacting with Hg during rare sightings of it in the wild too after, ahem, a thermometer break or something. And yet here we are decades later. In fact, I remember in high school chemistry class, this guy named Frank dropped a long thermometer and it ran all over the classroom floor. The teacher made a grimace, swept it up, and class resumed. Today, they would evacuate most of the county were that to occur. Heck, I even remember using Gramma's old electrolux vacuum once to clean a mercury spill as a teen, with a permamenent cloth bag. I _did_ discard the bag however on that occasion.

Yeah, as he was discussing heat, it seemed he said that backwards

Yep. Jaycar still sell them. I used to own one about 10 years ago. Not sure what happened to it.

It's nasty stuff if you absorb it, but if you simply swallow a blob of mercury, most of it will run right through you, not that I'd suggest anyone try that. But there was a case in 1989 of a family that painted every room in their house in the summer with the AC on and the windows shut; the mercury they added to latex paint in those days evaporated from the walls and killed their toddler. So it's the dose that makes the poison.

The coil is made of a "bimetallic strip". One metal on one side, one on the other. Choose ones that expand and contract at very different rates and you see it bend. Lots of really cool mechanisms that use this principle. Thermal switches and fuses often use this too.

i mean you should check the switch first regardless lol

Imagine the blind person that memorized the sound of anyone flipping the switch controlling their electric wall socket, that is unexpectedly shorting under flood water. The deadly silent switch

@@donb8088 Any switch in that scenario would be potentially deadly, if a switch is immersed in water live wires are too. The switch just breaks the circuit where you flipped it. @OP you should check the switch first, the sound a switch makes isn't there for safety reasons, the contacts need to open/close extremely quickly to stop it from arcing which prolongs the life of the switch.

I always turn off the breaker before touching anything in a socket I would not trust a wall switch

@@donb8088 _Residual current device_ to the rescue.

Good point!

Truly glad they banned it, mercury poisoning and mercury pollution is no joke. I am even cautious of people eating wild caught big fish

@@HercadosP it really is bizarre how incredibly toxic materials used to be unregulated like that… my dad once broke a massive thermometer. If you’ve ever seen a mercury dropping you’ll know it forms a tiny ball. Now, my dad just grabbed that thermometer’s ball in his hands and played with it, luckily nothing happened to him but think about how insane this is…

@@CloroxBleach0 Metallic mercury is not that dangerous to touch. There's not really much problem in just playing with it. It will become toxic if you don't properly clean it up and the residue oxidizes into organomercury compounds. But mercury also has high surface tension and beads up well. A little bead of mercury from a thermostat is easy to clean up. Now ask yourself how you're going to clean up the mercury vapor from a broken CFL bulb that's still legal.

@@NormanVN wait wait please expand, so all those light tubes that there are millions of in every office are full of mercury? I know people break those a lot when vandalising abandoned buildings.

@@Fr33zeBurn Not a ton of mercury, just a small amount but yes. The mercury heats up and vaporizes when the lamp is turned on, it absorbs the electrical energy and emits ultraviolet light. That ultraviolet light hits the fluorescent coating on the glass tube which then glows white. I would recommend not breaking one while it's turned on. If you do break one while it's on, don't look at it or you could get welder's eye, turn it off ASAP and leave the room.

it also keeps you from looking silly when trying to turn the light on when the house power is off

This video is pure clickbait lmao

Yes, but its only possible to have a silent mechanical switch that is made with mercury, the quest for total silence brought on the demise

@@SilverCymbal that design required liquid mercury. Liquid mercury isn't required for silence.

😎

Those are different. There is also a relay panel in her house and that is actually switching the circuit. The wall switch just triggers the relay on or off.

Those are actually Low Voltage Lighting Control. There is no 120 vac power at the switch. The switch uses fine wire and a low voltage circuit that would run a control panel that turned the actual lights on and off.

then again if the house came down on ya and their was a broken light switch beside ya i would be worried,

Flickering lights arent useful, and uhh if you happen to have seizures, your kinda boned

@@hunterbear2421 : thinking of the worst scenarios first!🥲

@@aregulargenericname8794 fortunately, i can watch movies like 'grudge' after midnight, Alone in my pitch dark room!😗👣🥹

@@mafiyapanditt nothing wrong with being ready for the worse

That is true and a good point!

They don't last indefinitely, the contacts wear down and kill it slowly.

That machine has been so helpful here, I am planning to snowblow with it too this winter. That will be a real test!