BulbCollector Forums
BULB DISCUSSION BOARDS => Antique Bulb Discussion => Topic started by: crutch49 on December 08, 2008, 10:44:30 pm
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I found an old glass base lamp with a light bulb I've never seen. The cord is one of the old cloth covered I remember as a kid. When you plug it in the light bulb comes on as there is no switch. It is a clear bulb and it has a long stem rose with leaves on the stem. The rose lights up red and the leaves are green. I've only plugged it in 4 or 5 times as I don't know how old it is and how long it will last. I hope someone has seen one as I've tried every search I can think of but no info anywhere.
Thanks for reading my post and I hope I explained it well enough.
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Hi and welcome to this forum.
Undoubtedly the bulb you've described is a neon figural lamp more or less like this:
(http://mis-bombillas.com/Mis-Bombi-Web/Foto-des/Neon_Flor_220-2.jpg)
The link to the whole page is:
http://mis-bombillas.com/Mis-Bombi-Web/Neon_Flor_220.htm
This kind of lamps were made from many years ago by a few companies around the world. One of the most important was U.S. based Aerolux. However, figural lamps are manufactured today by Chinese brands as mines are.
These lamps are low pressure neon luminescent lamps in which each whole and individual flower are one of the electrodes made from moulded iron sheet in the shape of roses. BTW these lamps have been made in a wide variety of electrode shapes, from letters, numbers, signs, dolls, animals, logotypes and of course, flowers like these.
Pink-Orange shine of roses are due to the negative luminescence of each one of them in neon atmosphere, because each individual flower are one of the electrodes of the lamp as said. When during each half-cycle one of them becomes negatively polarized, these lights in the characteristic colour of the neon luminescence. As the polarity change are fixed by AC mains frequency (50 Hz in Europe, 60 Hz in most American countries), the retina persistence phenomenon makes the eyes to perceive both roses simultaneously lit.
Most of times these lamps are not filled with pure neon, but with a mixture of neon with another gas, like argon or helium in a little percentage. The main reason to do this is the need for a little amount of UV radiation within the bulb to excite the fluorescence of the leaves. These ones are made from moulded iron sheet in the adequate shape. The surface of the leaves are covered with a subtle coat of finely pulverized fluorescent dust, that most of times are zinc orthosilicate that gives a nice deep green colour when excited by electrons or UV. So, at this bulb we have two kinds of light: the red-orange-pink one from the gas luminescence and the saturated green one from the orthosilicate fluorescence.
If you are interested about figural lamps, please ask Tim because he is a true expert about this kind of nice bulbs.
Regards.
P.S.: I have another neon and argon figural lamps in my collection, but there are not displayed them at my website yet. If I will get any spare time perhaps I could add them in next weeks to my little "virtual museum".