The first CFL: 1979 GE Circlite
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- čas přidán 30. 06. 2024
- The GE Circlite and similar fluorescent circline adapters were the first form of energy-saving lighting to fit in a standard bulb socket. They're difficult to assemble, too large to fit in many lamps, and take a long time to turn on, but produce bright, pleasant light and use much less power and produce much less heat than a standard incandescent bulb.
Here's the lamp base I used in the video: www.smcelectronics.com/partmi...
Time flow:
0:00 Light bulb shapes
1:05 Circlite lamps
1:54 The first CFLs
3:34 Unboxing
5:12 Assembly
6:29 New lamp base
7:23 First test
8:39 Radio interference
9:24 Comparison to incandescent
11:07 Installation
12:56 Conclusion
#fluorescent #vintage #lighting - Věda a technologie
The thing I find really fascinating is that in recent years, bulb manufacturers have iterated to the point where some LED bulbs are nearly indistinguishable from the incandescents of the past. No doubt they were itching for ways to cheapen and miniaturize the electronics to the point where they could reuse the same cheap glass bulb manufacturing equipment and materials in assembling the modern LED equivalents.
If you were a bulb making company, you’d be pissed if you threw away all your bulb making machinery when incandescent was phased out.
One that I have run into specifically with GE LED light bulbs is that some bulbs have a noticeable flicker sometimes. Not sure if that's because the bulb is defective, or the bulb can't gracefully handle dips in voltage like an incandescent can.
@@meatpockets I have a number of the GE LEDs (light blue frosted) and haven't noticed any discernible flicker. Sometimes LED flicker can have to do with other sources of RF noise in and around a house's wiring, though usually most UL or CE listed devices are well shielded/protected from those sorts of effects.
You are right on the money, when filament LEDs first appeared they showed dinky old bulb lines being used for it, they literally converted any line they could still find working to filament.
@@meatpockets maybe omitting any smoother/filter electrolytic capacitor 😉
My grandmother had the one at 1:13. She got the house in 1979 actually. The damn thing lasted until 2014..... Incredible stuff!!
I LOVED the Circline lamps. The GE ballasts were quite electrically robust and had good heat dissipation and therefore lasted A LOT longer than equivalent light output curly fry lights. I even did away with globes and used 4 in a ceiling fan. The ballasts were more than robust enough to take the shaking. The light wasn't too harsh and wasn't too yellow on the GE OEM bulbs. I really still like the things and wish you could get them new. They lasted for YEARS. EDIT: 11:28 yes they were a PITA to initially install, but once installed, they'd last the better part of a decade.
yes as a kid we had those lights in the kitchen !
He does mention buying some new tubes at the start! Maybe you'd have to order them online though.
Wait a minute. You had four circlines installed in a ceiling fan? That must have been quite a sight
It was ugly, but it lit up like the sun and didn't throw off hardly any heat. The 'Mad Scientist" look was a bonus.@@TheGreatAtario
My grandmother used a Circlite in her kitchen fixture for decades. That bulb out lasted her, and she told me that it was purchased in the early 80's. Even back then, light bulbs were built better.
My grandma had one too, it was in her floor lamp in the living room, I don't know if it burned out or it was just a power surge, but we were changing it out a few years ago (probably for either a new LED or just an old incandescent she had, she's a bit of a hoarder), and I was wondering what the weird steering wheel shaped bulb they were pulling out (and leaving cracked plastic everywhere) was called! My grandma (on my mother's side) also has that 50's fixture with the same lamp in her utility room (only with one bulb in the smallest size) and it still works great, but that other one with all three sizes I just learned about now looks even cooler!
Oh and the grandma that had the lamp also had the same huge shade (same design too and still does), you can tell things like that were made just for that time because now the new lightbulb looks dimmer and kinda puny even with more modern and efficient bulbs (or even just old incandescent bulbs, didn't check what she was using)
These were used by many hotels because they used less energy, didn't require as frequent replacement and were less likely to get stolen. They were a pain to change out, though, if they burned out while a guest was staying in the room as normal desk clerks didn't usually know the procedure and it was time-consuming even after they learned how to do it.
I imagine if that was the case, it was probably more convenient to just replace the entire burnt out desk lamp with one from an unoccupied hotel room, down the hall!!
seeing CFLs instantly remind me of the 2000s. we still have working CFLs around our place -- most of them are still installed in areas that we don't usually enter 😂
I actually had some incandescents outlive my CFLs because they were in closets and such. I have a couple of CFLs left but I've never been a big fan of them.
I was okay with decent-quality CFL units, but it is funny that (despite some QC issues and early failures) we have many still-working ones stashed away, along with incandescents, unused simply because we have so many LED ones that are nicer overall. But to this day, I still have and use a couple of incandescent/halogen closet lights; they get such brief and infrequent use that immediately changing them out for LED has negligible long-term benefit. Otherwise, though, I'm now primarily using LEDs plus a few stray CFLs.
Got some too, it kinda feels like we just switched to em huh?
I am very fond of these lamps, I still use many around my house to this day. Among my favorites is the GE 2-D series. The 60-watt models output an excellent quality of light, it's almost indistinguishable from incandescent.
At work they fitted 2D wall lights in a building built just ten years ago. They have been more reliable than the LED pendants they fitted in the canteen (although there are about 30 of those).
No matter the subject (for example a 40 year old light bulb), some CZcamsrs can get away with it by making it entertaining en informative enough to watch 😅
They've got that space-age kitsch aesthetic when used as a ceiling light, especially compared to the square tubular bulbs of the 90s.
As for the circline bulbs themselves, they're still pretty popular in Australia, often inside an oyster light, a fixture that seems to be in every kitchen built since the 90s.
A friend of mine has one of these things he calls it a UFO bulb, well anyway it is in the dunny. He had to replace it not so long ago, kind of funny to have this type of light in the shithouse.
I'm in Adelaide (Australia) and there's a 22 Watt one of these in the laundry. Gives a good light and it's working fine.
Can still buy the circular tubes easily too.
My friend had to get a new one a while back I think it was 22 Watts? they were not cheap but I guess they last for ages.@@shaun5552
I started using these around 2002 when we got our first house. They were so much better than CFLs and I could get a variety of color temps. The ballasts were good for about 2 tubes or so. By it's 3rd tube, it usually died. I still see the kits lurking on the shelves of hardware stores.
It was the internal starter that died. You can cut them open and wire in a new starter, or wire in a starter socket and glue it to the end of the adapter.
@@gregorymalchuk272 Sounds like a good place for an Electronic Pulsestarter. Those also make the tubes last longer as they have a timed warm up period so the tube always strikes first time (at least they three I use do).
@@MrDuncl Do they have those in the 120 volt market? Or are they universal because the ballasts make the open circuit and run voltage across the lamp the same? I know they were really popular in Europe where the choke ballast survived all the way to the present due to it being simpler with their higher voltages.
I had a circlite in my basement. It lasted a good 13 years before it kicked the bucket. Good stuff.
Thanks VWestlife..
I Never had a Circline bulbs but in the mid 1980's the local power co was selling Sylvania CFL bulbs for $5 bucks a piece. Bought about 6 of them and change my Apartment over to them from the regular bulbs.When I left my apt 18 years later to move into a house .A few were still working.
When the LED bulbs came out .The local elect company later on were giving away a box of LED bulbs and i change the CFLs out to LED bulbs in my house..
I still have 20-year-old Panasonic CFLs in my bathroom, and every single one of them is still going. As they've aged, they're actually better for this use, as they come on very dim then gradually fade up over a minute or so. Absolutely great when you're getting ready at 5am.
Did those old CFLs blink before turning on? They may have been magnetically ballasted if they were that old.
The neighbors across the street had the double circlite in the kitchen, but even more interesting was that the house had Remcon low voltage light switches/controllers. These were rocker type switches that operated relays which in turn operated the lights. There was a "master panel" (8 or so buttons) at the end of the hall next to the master bedroom where you could remotely turn of lights in the rest of the house. I don't remember but I think this kitchen fixture could be set to high/medium/low by pressing one or both rocker switches.
Ho you should visit my parents then, they still have a 1960s GE low voltage lighting control system with the two dials. To this day I think of the number 4 when turning on lights when I come home.
@@8BitNaptime I've never heard of this master light switch setup before. Super cool. Seems it would pair well with those intercom systems that also had a master radio to hear music throughout the house.
@@cassandrajoiner9933 Very much on the same level. The "tech" was cutting edge at the time (mid 50s).
I remember having these, and I remember having the early CFLs that did the same flickering. The worst part about early CFL and these were that if the house was cold, they would take time to warm up- so I remember that when I would get home in the winter and flick the switch the room would be so dark you could barely see anything for 5-10 minutes while the lamps heated up. modern CFL don't have this problem I think- not that anyone uses them anymore now that LED look exactly like an incandescent and don't need to warm up.
I like the long warm up time of the CFLs like in the bath where they start dim and slowly get brighter at about the same time as it takes for my eyes to adjust.
About 25 years ago I went to a church hall where they had fitted CFLs in all the outside wall lights. At a temperature of about freezing they were all continuously flashing like VWestlifes bulb at start up.
I was born in 1980. I slept in the same bedroom until I left my parents home and went to college. I initially had a room to myself, but then when my youngest brother was born in 1987, one of my brothers moved in with me and then years later they traded rooms in the other one did.
The other bedroom, which belonged to my youngest brother, and then my second youngest brother, had one of these styles of lamps in it. I remember it very distinctly, and specifically that the bulb was never replaced ever. However the incandescent bulb in my room was replaced fairly regularly.
In both cases, we didn't have any kind of bulb mounted in the ceiling of the bedroom or anything, we just had basically one of those desk lamp kind of deals sitting on our respective dressers, plugged into the socket controlled by the light switch. I remember, when I got older, discovering that I could turn off my lamp either by the light switch, or by the little twirly switch on the side of the lamp underneath the bulb. I definitely remember seeing the bulb in the other room that would flicker on and later fade out, just like in this video.
I have fond memories of these at my father's house. It was always fun to turn on the light switch to either the basement or garage and see them flicker for a few moments before lighting up.
Brings back memories living in Japan. It was way too bright at nighttime.
The house I moved into had a circle light fixture in the kitchen. It was hard to find a replacement when it went out. After that burned out we eventually replaced the fixture and now use bulb- shaped LEDs.
really? i guess my town is really lucky because my hardware store has a crap ton of fluroscents
never liked the glow of the fluorescent lights.
@@crazywarp36 One hardware store had it for sure. Maybe they did just fine. But they kept burning out quickly. Was it the fixture?
It was probably the fixture or something, because fluroscent bulbs last a while@@DougMcDave
That flicker and those lights are a staple of my 1980s childhood...
One advantage of the Circlite or Circolux is that it produces more light downward, and less to the sides, which makes it good for table lamps on desks. Also, GE did something before this called the Halarc or Miser Maxi-Light that was a miniature self-ballasted metal halide lamp intended for replacing general service incandescent lamps, but unfortunately it never caught on and Halarc lamps these days are very expensive collector’s items.
I am also guessing the reason why they dropped the trademark in 2020 is because a company called Savant Systems bought out GE Lighting and did all sorts of bad decisions.
I used to see these in hotels until recently, though after I had graduated high school in the early and had my own place, I would begin to seek these devices out for my table lamps, often preferring them over incandescent or the CFLs we had at the time until I could get color changing smart bulbs. Beyond that, everyone I knew in the 1980s just used cheap incandescents.
The house I grew up in (built in the late 50s/early 60s) had a Circlite in the kitchen. Brings back memories...
Remember these in the early 90s, had a few of these on bedroom lamps. Loved watching them flicker on.
I recall busting the Circlite bulb when I was reinstalling the harp back onto the lamp harp holder. Then, after a few years, the internal glow starter went out so I jerry-rigged an external starter in place of it. Wasn't pretty but functional and the lamp shade covered it all . . . Always enjoy your videos! :)
wow! My parents installed one of these in a living room lamp on a timer in the early '80s, so there would always be a light on in that room when we were home (or if we weren't) - a fixture of my childhood! It must have run at least 4 hours a day, every day, for 30 years. When it finally got swapped out maybe 10 years ago I made sure to grab it before it got tossed... I still have it, and it still works!
My grandma had one of these Circlites in her kitchen back when I was a little kid…. thanks for unlocking some serious childhood memories for me!
My grandmother had these bulbs in her table lamps for as long as I can remember, at least going back to the mid 1980s. She also had a large floor lamp with a magnifying glass that she used for reading, and it had a circular fluorescent bulb. Google tells me it was probably a Dazor lamp. Apparently vintage ones like she had go for around $200 today, but they're still making them, albeit with LEDs now, and new ones go for almost $700!
I hope for 700$ the LED inside is changable
*Also might be a LUXO lamp fixture of the same vintage. Cheers!*
I will say that as a precocious kid I truly enjoyed the space station looking circlite light bulb we had in one of our lamps.
I finally retired one of these Circlite bulb adapters from a garage loft space, where it had been since the early 80s I assume, serving duty in a bare ceramic light bulb socket on the ceiling.
Donated to Habitat for Humanity in a periodic donation box, ready for a VWL wannabe.
It started flickering, and needed new bulb. I actually had a new in box replacement bulb, but donated with the bulb adapter and replaced with a 100w equivalent led bulb, and may go with one of those multi leaf led shop lights for standard sockets.
We moved in 1997, buying from a retired local Electric Company engineer, so there were boxes of funky bulbs and Electric meters and switches left throughout the garage and basement
I remember staying in a hotel in Chicago in the early 2000s that had "state of the art" CFL desk lamps. I'm not sure why it worked this way, but there were multiple controls and an instruction sheet. You had to go through some rigamarole to get the thing to dim, and you couldn't shut it off and immediately turn it back on, there was some timer thing that had to elapse. It was the weirdest thing I had ever seen. It also took something like two minutes to get up to full brightness.
Did it have two separate bulbs, one facing up and one facing down? Look up the "Berkeley Lamp" and see if that looks like it.
In the UK and Europe we also had halogen bulbs between CFL and LED. They were small capsules inside a bulb shape. They are now being phased out, but they were better than CFL (better light, dimmable). They used about 25% less energy than a standard incandescent.
We had those too, until they were banned in August 2023.
@@vwestlife I bought a halogen bulb like that once. The thing would work for five minutes, get hot as hell then quit working for five minutes, then come back on. Too bad, it put out a nice quality light. I haven't seen them in a store in years, though. I still have three of the old large cylinder "CFLs" still in the boxes, too -- I must have bought them in the early 1990's. They don't fit in anything but the old bulb socket and nothing else ceiling lights so I used a couple back then and still have the rest. They were also only rated at a 52 watt incandescent equivalent. They wouldn't fit in any light fixture in my somewhat modern home and are too heavy to use due to the chain that most of my fixtures hang from (they are about 15 pounds each), due to my eyesight issues I am actually running two 200 watt equivalent (22 watt actual) LED bulbs (one in my office and one in my bathroom) without the globes as I really need the extra light and nothing that produces that much light will fit in the globes.
We have those in Australia as well, they’re almost phased out now though.
@@mharris5047 Halogen light bulbs are designed to run "hot as hell". They are incandescent lights putting put more light by running hotter but with a special gas mixture inside that keeps the filament from destroying itself. If your lamp tuns itself off after five minutes then there's something else wrong with it.
Fortunately I still have a few of them as so far I've had no luck finding an LED bulb which works properly in a touch lamp and doesn't buzz. Fortunately it's only one lamp which typically gets a couple of hours use each evening.
I have an old Coors Light wall display from my grandparents market that closed in 1990. The light died and when I opened it up I found that circle light bulb (not the Ge Circlite). I assumed since it was so old I wouldn't be able to find a replacement but it was $8 at Lowe's.
If you have problems in the future and a lamp replacement doesn't do the trick, there is usually a small, cylindrical ballast in those (and a lot of other really old fluorescent light fixtures). They are a pain to replace (more the disassembly process than the actual ballast replacement) but at least years ago the part was only about 60 cents.
Circlite lights are still MASSIVELY used here in Japan. They’re the main type of lighbulb for any ceiling fixture.
Led lights are still 5x the cost you have to pay in Europe and the screwy bit is incompatible, so many are sticking to these instead of switching to Led or importing them en masse.
The kitchen in the house where I grew up had a chrome, double-Circline fixture. It was great, really. The bulbs lasted a long time, were pretty easy to replace, and nice and bright. My grandparents used the Circlite adapter bulbs in many of their lamps, too. They could crack plastic lamp sockets if you bumped them wrong. I'd forgotten all about those.
I remember the apartment building I grew up in had used the commercial circular lights in the hallways and never knew they had this version for lamps.
I saw one of these for the first time when I was about 9 years old in 1987. I thought I had seen into the future. I had no idea these had been around for so long. In high school in the 1990s, I found one at WalMart and had it in my bedroom lamp. I absolutely loved it. Disappeared when I was in college. I later found the lamp inexplicably dismantled in a spare bedroom with no bulb in it.
My grandmother’s house has a triple circline fixture in her kitchen and two fluorescent tubes in her bathroom. I recall when I was a kid the former was damn near about to fall off, but it was fixed up and works great now.
My grandfather (as do I) hated standard/incandecent light bulbs (they gave him headaches, I just find the light off putting and they run too hot.), So I grew up with mostly fluorescent bulbs, we had the round ones in the dining room and kitchen and in the bathroom and utility room, and bedrooms we had the shorter "long tubes", Late-80s - on. Only the living room and a couple other lamps had low wattage incandecent bulbs. Later on during a minor remodel, the circular ones were replaced with further "long tubes".
Great video as always.
I've never commented on one of your videos before despite watching them all.
Anyway, I'd just like to say that the circular light is still the home standard light here in Japan.
All homes use them as the main center light in a room.
Of course more traditional light bulbs are also used in places like bathrooms or smaller rooms or for mood or stylistic lighting. However for a main light source in a large room, we use the circular light. Mostly in a duel configuration using one large and one small bulb. That way it is possible to alter the amount of light provided.
strangely we had quite a lot of GE branded lighting related stuff here in the UK, although we had our own unrelated 'general electric company' GEC as well , although most of that was pre 1990s!
I'm sitting under a circlite fixture as I watch this, in an attic no less. I finally stopped replacing the bulb a few years ago and just put a lamp up here.
The bulbs last a long time and can be had for 6 dollars or so at any hardware store. Get the actual fluorescent one. The LED retrofits don't play nice with magnetic ballasts.
Wow, I haven't seen one of those in a while, but I do remember them. Moreso in the adapter than a designed ring fixture.
Also, in my family growing up, it was always incandescent --- I don't think we ever bought CFLs. I know when I moved out I started buying LEDs if not incandescent for specialty purposes. These days I use multicolor Yeelight LEDs and tune my rooms to different colors most of the time, only using warm white in my kitchen, and switching the colors to white when needed. Had a few CFL and white LEDs left over from when I moved in so I will use those until they don't work anymore.
I like the look of these a lot. Kind of a retro-futuristic, Bladerunner-esque aesthetic to them. Pity we didn't have the adapters (at least, not to the best of my knowledge) here in the UK. I have seen the circline kitchen ceiling fittings, now invariably missing their diffusers, in the homes of older American relatives.
Thorn 2D were the equivalent here. Also look in old Argos catalogues and there were circular lamps to plug into a pendant lamp and even ones using a couple of normal straight 3 foot tubes. I wonder how many pulled the pendant fitting from the ceiling.
My grandparent's home had these in every fixture, and I remember that (with frequent brownouts and outright failures) every year the ballasts struggled more to light them in low light, and would not at all in total darkness. And while my aunts/uncles presumed the power was still out, I'd discovered that I could light/excite them using a strong hand torch so that I could keep reading during my visits.
About the time that I would go from room-to-room with my flashlight to tip them on I'd figured out that the problem was with the starters failing/burning out; But before I could try and repair them on my next visit, my relatives decided that "there were no starters, all of the tubes must have aged out" and threw out the entire stockpile from the 80's .
8:24 I miss my F.R.E.D II decoder, lost it in a flood. It was paired with a surround sound processor I bult myself using plans in Popular Electronics magazine as a starting point. I had stereo and surround sound before most people even knew it existed.
I recall when CFLs were first being widely promoted in US retail, such as Home Depot, at around the turn-of-the century.
There was a comparison display of 60 watt incandescent to a CFL of comparable lumens, but there was no comparison. The early generation of CFLs were so dim a person could wide-eyed stare into it; while a person had to squint their eyes when viewing the lit incandescent bulb.
It was several years before a succeeding generation of CFLs brightness started to approach incandescent levels.
What a great unboxing video. Grew up with a GE Circlite in the laundry room in the mid-80s
I never realized CFL lamps have been available since the 70s though as child in the 90s I do remember seeing them (the capsule style as well as some U-shaped bulbs) in stores for god knows how expensive, the 300 watt halogen torchiere was at it peak popularity my mother had one with the dimmer and greenish colored glass on the bottom of the bowl as did many homes I visited.
When we were selling my great grandmother's house after she passed a year and a half ago she had four circline fixture three with the 22 and 32 lamps one in each bathroom, one in the basement and the triple 22, 32 & 40 watt in her kitchen, great grandpa was an electrician after serving in the navy during WWII and he installed these beautiful fixtures complete with the gleaming chrome in 1967 when they purchased and remodeled the home, and all four were still working as of August 2022 when the house was purchased by another couple. Would love to think they are still kept and preserved but the couple who brought the house were in their late 30s so I'd doubt it.
Upon first time seeing the preview picture I thought this was a Parrot175 video 😁 Those vintage circline fixtures are friggin' cool! The 3 size one and that very nice double circline. I hadn't seen that design before and it indeed, looks beautiful.
And c'mon GE! They were data mining back then and wanted *you* to pay for the privilege for it by having to use your own postage stamp.
Interesting video, as usual. I have an old (shall I call it vintage?) Luxo articulated magnifier lamp. It uses one of those T9 Circline "bulbs" that you showed at the beginning of the video. I found that they can be converted to LED for around $60, but as long as the T9 bulbs are available, I'll keep using them. They provide a very pleasant light and they last a very long time. About 3 years. I replaced the old bulb a few weeks ago and since I ordered a pack of 2, I'm good for about 6 years.
Fun trip down memory lane. I still have the one and only 60w GE Circlite I got at a local electric supply house. I believe it was $30. US. Then again, I still have the IBM PS2/286 I bought new with the IBM brand high resolution monitor. I still cry when I think about the aprox $4500, that setup cost me from the computer store near my house in those days, and that did not include the IBM brand mouse I paid $99. to get later. I won’t even think about how much $ I’ve spent for RAM and drives years back. 😱 I always enjoy the various items you you published videos on over the last couple years.
Circline-style lamps are still very common in Japan. Loads of old household fittings use them, and plenty of new ones still take them, too.
The most common arrangement has one small and one large lamp, mounted one inside the other, for three levels of brightness.
Oh nice a video about 💡 its like Christmas but its Vwestlife day video! Very interesting as ever
My dad had a few of these in his garage. He originally got them some time in the 90s when I was a kid. At least one still works to this day (he replaced the other two with high-bay LEDs).
I remember them taking forever to turn on, and on particularly cold days they would start off with a dim pinkish glow and gradually get brighter white.
I remember my grandparents having these in every fixture and the ramp up time could be extreme. They also were a funny color different from the incandescents we were using in our house at the time.
My first memory with a Circline lamp goes back to the house my mom's mom and stepdad had until roughly 30 years ago. Ny grandma used a ceiling mounted Circline lamp to light up her make-up area. To me, it was the brightest single light in their house.
Thank you for posting this! I had forgotten about these, but remember them. I remember seeing them in older homes and always thought the exposed bulbs looked hideous. Saw these in a lot of hotels hidden in lamps and it was much better.
I love your channel, I enjoy listening to you talk about old electronics. You’re one of the best vwestlife.
My grandmother had one of those in her kitchen ceiling for 30 years.
I remember these things. I bought one for my parents' primary living room lamp, which was on all the time. Probably 1984 or so, when I was in high school. I saw the electric meter running like crazy outside, and though we had electric heat, wanted to try anything to lower energy and stop pollution. (I might have remembered Carl Sagan musing about carbon dioxide in 1980's Cosmos, but I don't remember.) My parents likely hated it, but let it be. I remember at some point it disappeared.
They seemed to be prevalent in apartment building stairwells, at least in Texas in the 80s. They'd turn up in odd places, and I'd always smile at the ingenuity. I don't think anybody cared about saving energy. Ronald Reagan saw to that.
We used those here in my country. As a ceiling lamp, although the light was weird it had a good wattage for illuminating the living room.
Then of course the LED technology replaced these lamps. We have had LED bulbs and lamps for about 13 years now, they work flawlessly.
I've always been fascinated with the Ballast lamps technology.
Part of this video covers a big problem with CFL and LED lamps: AM radio interference. 👍 Also fixtures using a dimmer cause static. My house is all LEDs and I cannot use any of my AM tube radios in the house unless I turn off all the lights. I gave up and installed Bluetooth receivers in the circuit, so now the old radios can tune in the world via my phone. Still using the original tube amp and speakers, so old and new tech in one box.
My grandparents installed circular fluorescent fixtures in their kitchen in the early 50s and as a kid I was amazed at how much brighter their kitchen looked than most homes that just had incandescent lighting. Not to mention Grandmother's fried chicken and black-bottom pie. 😊
What a bright idea to do a video about lightbulbs. My face lit up all through watching it. And I am glad I did as now I am glowing like a 100w lightbulb. I can't wait to brighten someone else's day with my new knowledge, hopefully making me look not so dim. Thank you Vwestlife for brightening my day.
For the longest time I had a magnification glass lamp on my desk that used one of the small ones. Going to LED all over and redoing my workspace means it's going to get the boot soon. IIRC, I got it in the early 1990s.
I LOVE these things! I have 4 of these in my house, proven to be very useful for directional lighting.
Also there’s actually a pretty good reason they tell you to install the harp BEFORE installing the tube. If you install the tube before the harp, there’s actually a risk of the harp breaking the tube if it comes loose. I learned that the hard way and broke a BRAND NEW 40 year old tube because of this.
Interesting, I knew these existed but didn’t know that you can still buy them new! Haven’t used these particular ones, but the classic fluorescent tubes produce a nice bright light and they last a long time!
Despite being a Circlite, its installation doesn't seem too circuitous! This house still has a few of its Circlite fixtures that have escaped modernization. Unfortunately, the hallmark kitchen circline was replaced many, many years ago in favor of the warmer and more inviting look provided by an incandescent fixture. I could've sworn I squirreled it away for safekeeping, but haven't seen it in just as many years as it's been since it was removed. I could always get one of these, but I'd still need an era-appropriate fixture to accompany it.
I'm surprised you were able to find those circline bulbs at Home Depot. I had quite the time trying to find replacement T12 bulbs after noticing a few had burned out in an overhead fluorescent fixture this summer. Anything that's left at stores is old stock, and many sites show that shipping of the 40 watt bright white T12 bulbs to NJ is unavailable.
T12 fluorescent bulbs were banned years ago, except for those with a color rendering index (CRI) of 87 or higher. NJ and a few other states ended that CRI exception in January 2023, so that's why any remaining stock is pretty much gone by now. But circline bulbs are unaffected by this ban.
@@vwestlife That explains it. Fortunately, I was able to source the bulbs from an NY retailer and stocked up.
@@stereophonicstuff That was my first thought since most of New Jersey is within driving distance of either NYC or Philadelphia. I will have to ask my cousin if he can still get bulbs in Michigan for what was his parents house -- the bathroom had T12 fixtures in a mirror assembly. The fixture still worked shortly before my aunt moved out of the house due to disability.
the incandescent bulb ban went into effect on August 1st 2023. Despite that i still see them on sale at the supermarkets and the hardware stores and thrift stores, i still have a stockpile of incandescent bulbs that have been sitting in my closet, the longest bulb lasted 20 years and the shortest one lasted only a few months. as long as i still see them in stores i Still buy them and use them or if there's no more ill pull one out of my closet stash.
I wish we did things like that today more often: trying to take useful technology from the commercial and industrial sector and apply it to the home.
Even if in this instance it was a bit of a mixed bag.
I forgot about these. Thanks for the memories dude
I actually felt like the use of these in table lamps was demonstrably superior to the bulb shape, the light was emitted right by the shade. No shadows from the harp. In industrial applications florescent tubes were preferred as they produced very little shadow and the circular tubes were pretty good in that regard.
I would point out, if you have a fixture that uses these circular bulbs. I work in a hardware store. Both the gas filled tubes and the LED substitute are available for sale.
The only time I have ever seen a circular fluorescent lamp of any kind in a private home or anywhere I can recall was in my grandmother’s apartment bathroom in a ceiling fixture. This was in the 1980s
I remember first seeing one of these in a house we had just moved into. They must be pretty reliable because it was up on the ceiling of a 2 story garage and came on in about a second every time. I kinda figured it was an old school attempt at a CFL before the technology really permitted such a thing.
I love those lights. Didn't realize so many different brands for the same thing. I enjoyed seeing the fixtures. I find it funny how they solved part of the energy problem but didn't push them until you got those horrible cfl lights. They should have at least mfg the 2 parts to cut down on waste like the these lights.
My first CFL experience was a Mazda-brand job which was a 10 watt 2D tube plugged into a ballast base, not unlike a Circlite, it was magnetically choked with a traditional starter build into the base, so had that familiar fluorescent tinging sound as it tried to strike, that was early 90s, and some months back, I bought one, trouble is, the 10w 2D tube is so rare now I struggled to find them, but managed to get a pair of GE branded ones (which is apt as I thing Mazda is or was part of or partnered up with GE), so I have a nice retro looking 2D CFL in my bedroom ceiling light... :D
Take a video and post it. I don't think I've seen magnetically ballasted 2-D adapters before.
@@gregorymalchuk272 Not much to it, this one I have sadly doesn't do the blinking like that one in the early 90s my dad used did (the one I got had a failed starter, so I replaced it with one I harvested out of a generic fluoro tube starter, and seems to just shimmer briefly then strikes), if you search for "Mazda 2DA10" on google there's a couple sites that have them pictured, they're oddball things, but neat nontheless... :)
My grandparents had this type of light in their kitchen. I still have a working fluorescent fixture in my house that uses the straight lamps. I like the hum it gives off.
My old house in a suburb north of Pittsburgh had one of these in the kitchen and one in the upstairs hallway. Both were different sizes and a pain in the butt to find replacements for, could always find one size but not the other. I was surprised to see them here as I didn’t think they were anything special, more a pain than anything else. The house got it’s latest remodel in the 70s, wood paneling in the basement and circlites.
Hah! I remember Mr Wizard on TV showing how these round fluorescent lamps would light themselves in a microwave, and it actually works! Wow I haven't thought about these in years!
We had two circline light fixtures in the kitchen of the home in which I grew up, built 1951. I always liked the look.
My mom & dad had a Circlite Fluorescent Bulb in their bedroom lamp and that thing lasted over 20-years in there and luckily we were able to find a new replacement at our local Chubby & Tubby Hardware Store only because the ballast had finally quit ⚡
I had one of those when I was a little kid that I absolutely loved. I thought it was so cool that I could have a florescent light in my regular lamp. Yes, I was a dorky little kid LOL
When I was a kid in the mid 1980s, My dad got two of these at Seedman’s (non-GE brand) for the kitchen and dining room. I remember the flickering. The original light bulb rings lasted until the early 1990s.
My uncle had these in the kitchen and the living room lamp for the longest time.
My grandparents had one in their kitchen back in the early 80s.
Just hanging out here. Great place to be.
Always a good day when a favorite creator posts about atypical consumer hardware!
I had one in a table lamp for more than thirty years!
Between Circline/Circlite and the curly bulbs were a couple of types of nearly normal bulb sized compact fluorescents. The first style shrunk the glass tube down to about 3/8" diameter, bent into a long U shape then folded that in half to put the middle U bend down by the ballast housing. The next style changed the tube to two or four parallel cylinders with tiny, hollow bridge tubes between them to make a continuous path like the folded tube style. The stick style even came in versions where the tube could unplug from the ballast for replacement. This type was used in a version outputting a lot of UV for bug zappers.
The stick style had many fixtures made with sockets for them rather than having the screw in ballast, and there are many LED replacments to plug in place of the fluorescent tubes.
YAY another Vwestlife Lightbulb video!
Re: AM interference, found out the hard way when I had a couple CFL curlies on my garage door opener. Bad idea, it interfered with the opener remote signal!
There are still incandescents available for that purpose due to the AM interference issue. IIRC they are only 25 watts, though.
The ring really is an ideal shape, not just for fluorescent tubes, but for LEDs as well. Inertia being what it is, the legacy bulb shape will be with us for a long time to come.
Had these in a couple table lamps starting around 1994, they lasted for almost 2 decades.
9:43 I haven't seen a 411 Video Magazine tape in forever. Lot's of cool OG skate clips came from those
I actually found a whole shelf full of these bulbs and fixture/ adapter things at an old hardware store
When I go back there I’ll pick one or two up
We had a few in the hardware store where I worked in the 90s. The packages looked exactly like this one, and they were a little frayed and faded, as if they'd been sitting there since the 80s.
always loved them odd round things
My house still uses circular fluorescent tube. My family and me can't handle bright LED light, they cause eye strain for us, the old tube is a lot easier on the eye. The light they put out is softer than the LED. Recently I just extend part of my house and it has LED installed. It's super bright but it's a orangy warm white so I guess that help to minimize eye strain.
Cool, my Grandparents had one in their kitchen overhead fixture.🥰
In the early 90's my Family lived in a house with one of these in the ceiling light, it never fully burned out there was just a small black spot in it.
The $9 price was what I remember. A pack of regular bulbs was about a dollar in those days, maybe $1.50. It was not possible to justify the extra cost for one of these things. I did push my family to regular CFLs at several multiples the cost of a regular bulb. Those CFLs never lasted long. And nowadays I run 100% LEDs, usually the ones from Dollar Tree. These finally finally hit the spot of lasting for years, using almost no power, and costing very little to buy.
9 dollars was a fixture and ballast plus bulb. The replacement bulbs were a dollar or two at a hardware store. You can still easily get them for 6 dollars at hardware stores.
I like the Sunbeam 60watt equivalent LEDs from the dollar tree, but tried one of their brand ones and it didn't last me a month. Started blinking when first turned on for a few minutes until it didn't stop blinking, then just dead. Have tried other wattage equivalent LEDs from them without issue though.
I live in a country, where those are uncommon, but available at some store. When i was a kid, around six years old, the parents of my best friend had this kind of lamp in a weird shaped holder, which looked like a sci-fi prop in their bathroom and my thoughts were that it was an extraterrestrial space lamp. I asked the parents about the lamp and his mother told me that they stole it from an UFO. Whenever i was visiting my best friend and felt sick, because my stomach was a bit more sensitive back then, i spent 10 minutes sitting under this lamp and whispering to it to get "extraterrestrial space healing powers" and it did make me feel better, but that didn't last long, because i grew up and realised, that the lamp is not part on a UFO.
There was also another instance where a weirdly shaped lamp triggered my child fantasy. There was a small shopping centre with a color changing crystal lamp inside a water fountain near the main entrance and exit area. There was a sign which read: "do not drink". As kid i thought that the fountain and it's water was part of the security system. If the thieves would break in at night, the crystal would release it's spirits, each for one colour to drag the intruders to the magic water in order to dissolve them.
*Just my 2 cents here: We have two GE metal clip units in living room end table lamps, purchased ~1980 at FEDCO in LA. Both always in daily use and function perfectly well. Bulbs last longer than my memory can report. Don't need 'em yet but back in July bought two GE 11804 FC8T9/KB 3,000 K replacements for 15 bucks on Amazon. Local hardware and big boxes also carry them but the colour temps on offer suck. GE's colour temp is good match to other incandescents and CFLs in rooms throughout the house. No LEDs, never LEDs. For folks wailing about "ugly light" and "too blue", etc. That is result of your lousy colour temp choices and not the lamp's fault. For those complaining about AM RFI: Just put a battery-powered AM radio next to ours and hearing zero impulse noise. Cheers!*
I noticed other people commenting that these popped up in hotels a lot. I saw them too, even as recently as 2022.