Vintage Lighting Speaking of Old Lamps!

[Van]

How's this for a freaky lamp?!? 24-28v 2500W ! Mogul Bi-pin base.
And look inside the envelope. Yes, little metal pieces. They are for cleaning the inside of the envelope.

Look at the gauge of the filament!




Can anybody guess what it is?

 

[JonathanHarpur]

Judging by the text on the envelope, I'd say "some kind of searchlight" - possibly an older skytracker, or 80's era helicopter searchlight?

Edit: Just got the second image, so the skytracker and helicopter searchlight guesses seem impractical. Marine or aircraft navigation lights? (Thinking more "small lighthouse" or "land-based lane markers" more than navigational buoys or shipboard lights...)

 

[JD]

Searchlight is correct, although this is not from some great knowledge-base, it's printed on the top of the lamp!
That abrasive powder was common for high wattage low voltage lamps. The Altspot 2100 used such a lamp, Mogul Bi-pin and powdered cleaner, low voltage, but a different filament layout.

 

[JonCarter]

All of our 5k & 10k studio lamps had tungsten cleaning powder in them. We cleaned them regularly between setups. I don't remember if the 2k or other smaller lamps had cleaner in them.

 

[Van]

I thought the more interesting information was that it was a 24-28 volt lamp.
Many folks here in the PNW know of Hollywood Light, Inc. I received this lamp from Don Cameron the founder of the company. We were looking at restoring a couple old fixtures for him a couple years back and he bought this to us. What a lot of folks don't know is that they weren't named for "The Hollywood District" here in Portland, and they weren't named for the Movies, necessarily. They got their name from the WWII surplus searchlights they had. they would rent them out for parties, grand openings, big sales... People would always ask, "You got those 'Hollywood lights'? " referring to the Iconic searchlights at big movie openings. And now you know.

 

[JD]

That voltage is a common aviation voltage (Think ACL's) so it would not surprise me if this was an airborne searchlight. We didn't always have xenon aircraft mounted lamps, so it could be. The most common plane headlight for jumbo-jets is still the Q4559X , which is also 28 volts.

 

[ship]

Thinking search light due to the space between the top of the globe and the filament. Would mean to me a up burning position for heat in the tubular lamp. Kind of miss the DKZ lamps in a way where you could or should swirl the tungsten particles away. Have a book from the early 70's that mentions such a lamp type.

Very interesting no getter gate to collect up the tungsten instead of the believe it was silicone little pebbles as it were collecting up the spent tungsten.