[sdiy] my annual DIY holiday project

[KA4HJH]

>That's just too weird you'd mention C7 twinkle bulbs and contact mics right
>now. My 3" cd...
>
>C7 Twinkle Clusters
>a.k.a. Vibrational and Inadvertent Electromagnetic Emanations of Bimetallic
>Self-Cycling Thermoswitch/Filament Systems in Grouped C7 Twinkle Bulbs

Longtime Xmas light collector here.

First allow me to interject that the late Bill Nelson's (the light
collector, not the musician) Xmas light web site is back on line, albeit
not entirely yet. In particular the aluminum tree section isn't up yet, or
the extensive section on bubble lights. But here it is:

http://www.oldchristmaslights.com/

Now with that important blurb out of the way... when I was a kid (mid 60's)
we had some of the early light sets with the miniature tubular bulbs that
have taken over holiday lighting these days. Back then they hadn't
perfected the miniature blinker bulb yet so they made sets that had a large
blinker bulb with an Edison base in series with the rest of the string,
which unlike the blinker was permanently wired together. Now, the neat
thing about these particular blinker bulbs was that they were VERY chaotic
in their behavior, flickering on and off in a really unpredictable way, and
they made a loud buzzing noise as they made the transition. Two or three
strings going at once made some really interesting sounds.

Like so many things they stopped working and got thrown away. I
particularly liked the set that had large plastic snowflakes that were
curled up like flowers. Inside each snowflake were two bulbs of different
colors, and as the blinkers buzzed away the lights would independently fade
on and off, creating a never-ending variety of colors as the light mixed.
Watching this when I was five was the most interesting thing in the world.

Now, years later, I have yet to run across any of these although I've heard
of lights of this type turning up on ebay--they only made them like this
for a short time. In the meanwhile I have a bunch of my vintage bubble
lights going on a tree right now (hint--use a variac to save the bulbs).
There's a guy who's reverse-engineered the old bubble lights and makes
reproduction bubble tubes. He has HUNDREDS of them going at once. The sound
in that room must be like bacon frying. Perhaps for your next opus you
could try using bubble lights as a noise source. Some of the really early
bubble lights have a glass slug inside the tube. This chinks and rattles in
all sorts of interesting ways. He make reproductions of those, too.


I don't have the cash for what vintage gear goes for on ebay. But I'd sure
like to have those snowflake lights again. So if you run across them in a
junk shop somewhere...

-- 

Terry Bowman, KA4HJH
"The Mac Doctor"

"When possessing intellectual property becomes a crime only criminals will
possess intellectual property"--Dr. Oscar