I built an arc light using the carbon rods ground down to points. ...
My grandfather told us of his experience making a carbon arc lamp.? Probably around the turn of the last century.
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The street lights in town were carbon-arcs.? Periodically they replaced the old carbons and discarded the spent ones in the street.? My grandfather grabbed a couple and brought them home.? Upstairs in the attic, he carefully wired them to the mains power, on the input side of the fuse box because he knew it might blow a fuse.? Then, using cloth for protection, he got the spark going and watched as it made a darned good, really bright lamp.? (No ballast.)? It worked great for about 15 seconds, then stopped.? Power was out for the rest of the night.
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The next day, the utility company couldn't figure out why their power distribution transformer had blown completely off the utility pole.
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Somehow my grandfather didn't get into trouble.
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I never went that far.? But I did manage to get some nasty sparks in the bedroom at age 2 or 3, and lived to talk about it.
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Andy
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