~e; Fwd: Interesting collection of mercury vapour streetlight photos

[brian carroll <human@electronetwork.org>]

  this link was sent to me by a friend who had a fascination
  with streetlights when growing up. trying to understand
  them, their different types, mecury vapor, halide (i think),
  and others. i have been in contact with archaeology lists
  for this reason, looking at these links, although recent
  history considering millennia, really gives some perspective
  on culture today (when a 1950s light looks _so outdated_
  from the present, modern version luminaire/fixture). things
  are moving so quickly, but this infrastructure fades also
  so quickly, the memory of its development, and the meaning
  of its earlier designs. what is amazing to me is that the
  wooden poles/distribution system has changed very little
  since its inception in telegraphy, besides refining the
  system, and also its aesthetic similarity with ships and
  sails, the tension wires to keep things taught and in
  balance. someday it seems probable that archaeologists
  whom focus on understanding electromagnetic culture will
  find a lot of information in these streetlight systems,
  much as David E. Nye and Thomas P. Hughes have in their
  written works, from gas lighting to arc-lighting and then
  incandescent and fluorescent (i have no idea if mercury-
  vapor is fluorescence, or another process. all i know
  about fluorescent lighting, at least i think this is how
  it goes, is that there is some gas in which an electron
  is shot and illuminates the gas inside the chamber/light,
  thereby emitting lightwaves.). one interesting book, for
  children, but for professionals equally well, is that of
  David Macauly (sp), the author of The Way Things Work or
  some such title. one of his works, a picture book, had
  a gas station in the late 20th or 21st century, i think
  it was, in traditional archaeological/architectural style.
  and i think it may or may not have had those huge lights
  that used to be like giant ironing boards, that are so
  quickly disappearing from the landscape. the lights must
  have been 8 feet long and 2 feet wide, big rectangles of
  light which would shine down on the gas station parking
  lot, and were very car-like, in their scale and form.
  also, dynamic, in that they arched. in any case, just
  like the lights below, hopefully documentation of this
  unique landscape, quickly disappearing and being replaced
  by today's standards, can be saved for later generations
  to understand the process of electrification in our
  societies. there are people doing the work, cataloguing,
  but mostly hobbiests it seems, but the electronetwork.org
  project, if it can forge ahead despite adversity, would
  be able to link to these unique resources in a way to
  introduce such artifacts to others, the distantly familiar.

>http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/1059/mercury.html


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brian thomas carroll		the_electromagnetic_internetwork
electromagnetic researcher	matter, energy, and in-formation
human@electronetwork.org	http://www.electronetwork.org/

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