Re-Inventing The Carbon Lightbulb

A few things I read in my research for this video (not all are solid historical reports, but technically useful in my reinvention):

Thank you very much for watching!
-Ben

[Nighthawkinlight]

"It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph, or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a photograph, or a telephone or any other important thing—and the last man gets the credit and we forget the others. He added his little mite — that is all he did. These object lessons should teach us that ninety-nine parts of all things that proceed from the intellect are plagiarisms, pure and simple; and the lesson ought to make us modest. But nothing can do that." - Mark Twain

[corktail]

now people will know what to do with their mountains of toilet paper

[ericchambers]

I have an Edison Mazada light bulb, that my father found in his grandmother's attic, and packed away in a coffee can, in 1969. The bulb, 25 W, still works to this day! I think it was made in the 30s, and has a tungsten filament. The funny part is, I think the metal coffee can it's stored in is worth more as an antique, than the bulb itself.

[theCodyReeder]

Dang it I was going to do this! Meh, let’s face it I probably would never have gotten around to it and wouldn’t have as good a job. 😅

[MrArcher]

I actually toured Edison’s shop in Florida as a young man some 45 years ago. At the time there were still bulbs burning that were made by Edison lighting his shop.

[ElectroBOOM]

Very nice! I couldn't make it better if I tried. I would just use one of those mechanical pen graphites to make my life easy! Lazy man's methods and such!

[Acer]

To this day the Sprengel pump (the one Edison might have used) is still by far the most energy-efficient method of creating high vacuums.

[AE]

What if you first replaced the atmosphere of the bulb with an inert gas(or the propane), THEN pulled the vacuum, that way you would have no oxygen to react with it, and a vacuum to minimize the airwashing?

[boneappletea]

This channel is like "How it's made" to me
Am i gonna make any of the things this channel teaches?
No
Do i enjoy knowing how it works and seeing the steps to making it?
Yes, very much so

[Dalewoodian]

NightHawkInLight: here's a message from my sponsor that helps me make this awesome content.


Me: OMG! Birb clicked the pen!

[iStormUK]

You used that bird to trick me into watching the sponsor.... Good call, I wanted to see what he did next, now thats marketting.

[Dr.Fluffles]

I think it's fair to be able to both recognize the innovations and good someone brought to the world, while also acknowledging the shady and messed up things they did along the way. Edison was a genius, who brought lesser known inventions into the limelight that would become indispensable to the world, inventing some of his own, legitimately, along the way; but he was also a genius that used people to further his own image without proper accreditation, even when he knew the inventor, and supported people who did horrible things, such as Brown, if they worked in his favor. Recognizing the good and the bad of great historical figures' actions is how we can grow over time to filter out the bad, and encourage the good.

[julianwalde]

Playing around with an arcwelder like that once gave me horrible "sunburn" on my hands and arms ... always wear long sleeves and welding gloves if you do something like this!

[Kashxk]

You can easily see that he too enjoys himself a lot while making his videos. Very genuine and enjoyable to watch.

[crimsonhalo]

3:15 You forgot to mention the other huge perk of carbon arc lighting: *free suntans.*

[creativerecycling]

I did something similar a few years ago with my grandsons. I used an old pickle jar with electrical connections glued through the lid and also a connection for a vacuum pump made from an old refrigeration compressor. For a filament, I used a 0.7 mm pencil lead from an automatic pencil. And a power source was a 12 V lawnmower battery. It worked quite well and I have a video of the end result. It produced a lot of light and heat, and lasted for several minutes before it died.

[PhiTonics]

Next: make the forever tungsten lightbulb. Please.

[madmanmapper]

Carbon arc lamps did not consume a lot of power for the amount of light output they gave. For the time, they were well suited to street lighting and large indoor areas like factories. The dangerous UV C light they gave off was completely blocked by the glass shades put over them, so they were completely harmless in that regard. They enjoyed probably 100 years as the go-to electric public lighting, staying in use in some cities up into the 1920s or later. The main downside of needing the rods to be replaced every couple days was really not a big deal when you consider its main competition - the gas light - needed each light to be manually lit every night, then extinguished every morning.

[Bigfoot_With_Internet_Access]

Well you know how it is, sometimes in life you've just gotta make a carbon filament lightbulb

[roundgarage]

Joseph Swan used nitrocellulose as a filament that worked better than bamboo. He also developed and patented a vacuum pump to extract air from the bulb. Thank you for making us more aware of Joseph Swan.