Super Rare 1940's Antique Fluorescent Christmas Lights 

That’s awesome!

Thanks!!🤣

Thank you very much!

I always try to ask

Thank you!

I understand brother

Merry Christmas

Thank you my friend!

Thank you! I agree they are cool!

Awesome!!

Thank you my friend. Hope you have a Happy Thanksgiving!

@@theantiquefanatic You and your family have a Happy Thanksgiving also.

Thanks Riley! Me too!

I know! They are so cool!!

Sounds lovely!!!

Cool!!

No I don’t think so…

Can’t say I’ve heard of that either, but have heard of stranger things.

Maybe put some in a candolier…

Thanks Mark!

@@theantiquefanatic It might be possible, if clunky looking, to use colored CFL lamps with a suitable base adaptor.

Agreed! No comparison!!

No actually there is nothing but the bulb. The string is just an average c-7 light string. Not sure how all that works without ballasts and starters. Unless it’s at the base of the bulb.

Regarding the last part of your comment: The starter cans used in fluorescent lights in the nineteen forties were larger than the base of the bulbs you show in your video. And, the ballasts used in fluorescent light fixtures in those days consisted of an iron core transformer and choke, which would never fit in the base of your bulbs. The puzzle of how these bulbs worked piqued my interest, so I decided to do a search for the original patent and find out how they were able to eliminate key parts of a fluorescent light. I believe I found the original patent that was assigned to Sylvania. It's patent number 2,421,571, and it turns out that these Christmas lights had more in common with neon glow lights than with the fluorescent lights of the day. The key to eliminating the starter and heavy ballast was in the fact that these bulbs were only 5 Watts each, and their small physical size allowed the electrodes to be placed close together, eliminating the need to heat the bulb, or raise the voltage above 110 VAC. The low wattage made it possible to replace the heavy iron-core ballast with a simple 1000 Ohm resistance, which was small enough to fit in the base of the bulb. In a full sized fluorescent light fixture, a resistor would run much too hot to be used as the ballast, but it worked in five Watt bulbs. The other difference was, unlike fluorescent tubes, these bulbs did not use mercury vapor, they used a combination of argon and krypton, which are gasses at room temperature. Mercury condenses to a liquid when a standard fluorescent light is turned off, so it needs heaters in the fluorescent tube to vaporize the mercury, and that in turn requires a starter to time the heaters. So, eliminating the mercury vapor eliminated the need for a starter. The rest of the magic was accomplished by the design and composition of the electrodes used in the bulbs, and by the selection of the phosphor. The thing I learned from reading up on this is that we don't need mercury vapor to make a fluorescent light, other gasses are also able to generate enough UV light when they are ionized to excite phosphor. @@theantiquefanatic

I’ve been meaning to do a test on the power draw. Just haven’t had time. Will do soon.

Not sure but that’s a great question

@@theantiquefanatic , I recall them as a child and they may have been in some little towns into the early 80s.

@@southernguy35 I have another set that is round but incandescent and much thicker cord. More likely that these were used in the scenario you’re describing. The fluorescent ones were for indoor use only.

I doubt that fluorescent bulbs would have worked well in the cold.

I haven’t left them on long enough but I’d bet they would get hot…

T-17’s

@@theantiquefanatic My understanding is they stopped production of the F90T17 lamps. Remaining lamps (if you can find them) are as high as $200 each. Also stopped production of SOX lamps in 2017. Remaining stock is $50+

@@benjaminvella2736 You’re right! They are not easy to find for sure. We’ll discuss that one day soon on a future episode of The Antique FANatic! Stay tuned!!

Good question…. Guess it’s the difference in the gases inside.

Technically speaking, there is a big difference. In a neon light, an electric current passing through neon gas, causes the gas in the tube to produce visible light. In the case of neon gas, that gas can only produce red-orange light and a different gas would be needed in each bulb to produce different colors of light. A fluorescent light bulb is entirely different, all fluorescent lights have mercury vapor inside the bulb (or tube) and an electric current passing through the mercury vapor generates invisible ultraviolet light. This invisible ultraviolet light then strikes a fluorescent coating on the inside of the bulb and this coating is then stimulated by the UV light to re-radiate a specific color of visible light, depending on the type of fluorescent coating used. He mentions this coating in the video, so we know that these are indeed fluorescent bulbs and not neon bulbs, plus if they were all actually neon bulbs, then they would all be orange-yellow when they lit up. @@theantiquefanatic