Erik Reuter wrote: > > On Wed, Jun 25, 2003 at 10:34:43PM -0500, Julia Thompson wrote: > > > All of the ones we've owned since we got married (and we got some > > in 1991) were wired in parallel. But if you pull a bulb *out*, all > > of them go off. Which can make decorating the tree with Star Trek > > starships that plug into the light string interesting.... > > I've never actually bought parallel ones -- I've just seen them in the > store. That's interesting about a missing bulb taking them all out. I > guess it is designed to short out the voltage source when a bulb is > removed (maybe the socket electrodes are just leaf-springs that come > together when there is no bulb?). I wonder if that is for safety, or > just a design flaw?
I think it's for safety.
And if you have a string of 100 lights, it only takes out the half (50) that that bulb was in. (Not sure on strings of 200 lights, don't have any of those.)
Julia
We had plenty of those when I was a kid. These weren't dual ended wires with plugs on each end of the wire. Some of them had a male/female plug on the end, so you'd plug it in, then plug another string into that plug then another and so on. The bulb socket had just two wires, one coming in and one going out. At the end the wire just looped back down. There were sockets one the way up and back. They were big bulbs with little screw bases, smaller than they are now. I'd bet I still have some of those light strings.
Christmas time was fun. We always had a fake tree which was like putting together a jigsaw puzzle, since the directions were lost about five seconds after the tree was bought. But it was easy. Just sort the branches by size, and put the tree together. And the pine donuts that went around the shaft between branch groups, like I've ever seen a tree like that. From the fifties until after I was born they had a silver pine tree. I never saw it, other than pictures.
After setting the tree up you'd unwind each light string and plug it in. If it didn't work, you'd start methodically unscrewing bulbs and putting in a bulb you knew was good. More often, you'd have a string that worked and you plug bulbs from the bad string into it to find the bad one(s). This was done with everything plugged in all the time of course. Because of the plugs, you couldn't just wind the lights around the tree, you'd have to do some fancy patterns to get everything covered. The star or angel on top needed a seven foot extension cord.
Plus there were the outside lights which were bigger and burned hotter but never seemed to break no matter how cold it was. Those bulbs had a satisfying pop when you threw 'em at a wall.
Kevin T. - VRWC Christmas in June
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