I've Heard of Cornhole, the Beanbag Tossing Game, But Corn Bulbs? LEDs Have Changed Lighting Forever.

August 28, 2021

#438

Gentle reader,

In 1982, I went to work for the Washington, D.C. subway company whose acronym is WMATA, short for Washington Metro Area Transit Authority. metro for short. They do not capitalize the m.

During propulsion and braking class, I asked the instructor how LEDs worked. "F.M." "Frequency modulation?" "No, f___ing magic, I don't know how they work." OK, then.

For the purpose of this article, I will not explain it, it's pretty cool, but they went largely unchanged for almost 100 years before engineers started experimenting with making their illuminations brighter.

You are no doubt familiar with the curly-cue compact florescent light "bulbs" which were the first answer to the U.S. Government's order to reduce the wasted energy conventional Tungsten light bulbs produced. Remember the toy Easy Bake Oven? It used a 100 watt light bulb which gets hot enough to actually cook the little cakes. Between 2.5% and 5% of the electricity is converted to light, the rest is wasted as heat.

The main problem, and there were many, with CFL bulbs, and all florescent lighting, is that they need a small amount of the poisonous liquid metal called Mercury to work. Thus, used up bulbs and tubes are hazardous materials and cannot legally be thrown out.

Lighting engineers figured out how to get LEDs to produce more light, but they then also produced heat. Not nearly as much as traditional bulbs, though. So, the first LED bulbs had expensive and somewhat heavy aluminum finned heat sinks to dissipate the heat. 

As time went by, they eliminated that problem in several ways. Also, LEDs do not emit light in all directions like regular and CFL bulbs do. Again, they overcame that problem too.

Some, mostly Asian, lighting engineers came up with a unique way to get their LED bulbs emitting 360 degrees. See below:

Their answer was using many bright LEDs in rows the full circumference of the body with some on the end as well. And they work.

My first dipping of a toe into the corn bulb waters was buying the four on the left. They were found on Amazon, marketed as "100 watt equivalent". When they got here, first, they are small, and second, they do not emit nearly that much light, singly, anyway.

So, I made this setup using four ceramic covered lightbulb sockets I had saved from a removed bathroom fixture. I mounted them on the circular flat piece of steel shown.

I have been trained in working with electricity, so know what I am doing. Do not, EVER, try and work on things that use electricity. It can and will KILL you!

The ceramic insulating covers over the metal lightbulb sockets are there because the bulbs get hot, especially if there are multiple ones.

So, why did I want a corn bulb? I had found a photography light stand with an attached collapsible square reflective umbrella at a thrift store.

This is not it, exactly, the photo I did find would not open for this purpose. But you will see it below.

Traditionally, they used large and hot tungsten lightbulbs. However the cord on this setup is very thin, and thus would overheat and possibly catch fire using anything but LED bulbs. 

When I tried a good LED bulb, like the one on the left (this is an excellent photo of an early LED bulb with finned aluminum heatsink, which I just found online) you see that only the front hemisphere of the bulb is lit. Thus no light comes from the rear portion of the bulb to bounce off the reflective surface of the light umbrella.

Very clever photographic editing here, I wish I had that kind of talent. LED on the left, conventional tungsten bulb in the middle and a typical CFL bulb on the right. All with no visible means of support or electricity.

Using this photo again, the smallest corn bulb is supposed to emit the equivalent of what a traditional tungsten 100 watt bulb would put out. The next one is "Rated" at 200 watts and the one on the right, 300 watts. Prior to buying the big ones, I made the fixture and just holding it lit up inside the umbrella, it still did not produce enough light. SO, I bought first the 200 then the 300.

Here is the 200 watt equivalent corn bulb mounted inside the reflective umbrella.

And here it is lit up. Nice, white light. Each of these big corn bulbs came from different factories.

And above and below is the 300 watt equivalent bulb, not it has some blueness to it's light.

Since, as mentioned, I had no way to mount the "400 watt" cluster of corn bulbs inside the umbrella, here they are, below, lit up. Also, a nice white light is emitted.

Now, the way lights "Color" is rated is based upon: "Black Body" Kelvin degrees of light measurement. Here is a link, coincidentally from my alma mater, Virginia Commonwealth University, to explain:

Electromagnetic Spectrum; Kelvin Scale; Speed of Light; Additive Color Theory

Basically, a theoretical "Black Box" or object, heated up until glowing, with the resultant colors emitted at each increase in heating up into thousands of degrees Kelvin is how light sources are rated. "Warm" bulbs are only a between one and two thousand degrees K, while "Daylight" bulb are between 5000 and 6000 K.

I decided the 300 watt equivalent corn bulb would do the trick to provide me enough light for my needs. So, what to do with the others?

This house has two bathrooms, one upstairs, the other downstairs. But, it had a little passageway from the master bedroom to the upstairs bathroom. I removed what was there and made it a storage alcove. The four light sockets came from an identical fixture as this one in said bathrooms. The shot above, with the lights off and flash used. Note the four traditional bulbs we bought by mistake thinking that they were inexpensive LED bulbs. Tsk, tsk.

These two photos do not due these small corn bulbs justice. The bathroom is REALLY bright now!

For the remaining 200 watt corn bulb, I removed the LED bulb which was there and put it into the three-bulb overhead fixture I had installed in this very room, the one pointing towards where I am sitting now.

Every Sunday afternoon, at five, my mother and all four of my siblings get onto an hour long Zoom call. It is wonderful, Mom is 88, and we are spread about the country so it is a great chance to get to know each other better and catch up. We have never run out of things to talk about and I highly recommend doing so with your loved ones if you have the capability. 

I believe that 200 watt equivalent corn bulb will light me up "right well" as we here in the South sometimes say.

For your edification and education, here are a number of different types of corn bulbs I found doing research for this article:

Each are their engineers idea of what a corn bulb should look like. The one that folds open is pretty clever. And the ones which have little fans inside are cool, too. Get it? They are cooled.

I hope you enjoyed reading my humble blog. I enjoy writing and your kind words or comments below or on Facebook are always wonderful to read.

Scott

August 28, 2021

#438

I Bought a Pair of 2007 Porsches for a Bargain Price!

August 26, 2021

#437

Gentle reader, 

Once the kids finally stopped moving back in, along around 2006 or so, I began buying fun cars. The first was a 2002 Subaru WRX wagon in WRC blue with a 227 horsepower turbocharged flat-four cylinder engine and a five speed manual transmission driving all four wheels.

Next, I began a hunt for a Porsche. What I truly wanted was a 1976 912E. A one-year-only model made exclusively for the US market. The 912E used the last model year (1975) Porsche 914 flat-four fuel injected VW engine in a 911 body. They only made 2050 of them. The next year, the new "entry level" Porsche came out, the 924. The E stood for eingespritzt, German for injected.

The cries of Porsche Purists were loud and wide. "A front-engine water cooled Porsche! Sacrilege! And it doesn't even have a Porsche engine!"

Since most Porsches in the U.S. are located in California, 912s included, they were out, that and the prices. So, onto eBay I went. 

I came across a black 1987 model, one I had never heard of: 924S. A two-year only model which has a 924 body and interior, but with the proper Porsche 944 engine and driveline. The starting price was $1999. So, I bid and won, buying it for $2225. I could not believe I'd won the auction.

When the Boxster came out as the new entry level Porsche, there was much rejoicing. A proper air-cooled Porsche with a 911 engine but in the middle, not the rear of the car, and a roadster to boot! Image courtesy of  Motor Trend magazine.

But there is another company called Porsche. And it is the same Porsche family that created the design company. It is called PORSCHE DESIGN. Here is a link to their website:

Porsche Design® Official Site | Porsche Design

There have been car company tie-ins to all kinds of clothing and shoes for many years now. But, PORSCHE DESIGN has NO ties to the Porsche Car Company. As I said it is the same family, but they do not design nor make automobiles. The only thing that is the same is the font used for PORSCHE.

And these are a pair of 2007 adidas designed by PORSCHE DESIGN, and made and sold by adidas and PORSCHE DESIGN. I just noticed recently that adidas never capitalizes the first letter of their name.

These are driving shoes, I own a number of them, and in the past had another pair of PORSCHE DESIGN driving shoes which I will show you below.

What attracted me to this particular pair was A, the price, and 2, the design with rows of "PORSCHE DESIGN adidas" all over the body of the shoes. And yes, I know I mixed letters and numbers there. It is for comic relief.

One would not and should not try running in these shoes. They are designed to look cool, fit well and make operating the three pedals which proper cars have more fun.

What little traction the grey portions shown above PORSCHE DESIGN had is somewhat worn away.

Like a previous pair of GOODYEAR adidas driving shoes I used to have, the stripes which usually stand out on adidas in a contrasting color, are the same shade as the body, albeit a bit shinier.

What little wear the shoes have is oddly here on the backs of the body. Note how the shoes heels are shaped like our heels. A key sign of driving shoes.

When downshifting using the "heel and toe" method, the rounded heels come in handy. Not that I've ever needed to heel and toe when downshifting.

Oh, I almost forgot to tell you their price: $27.99 via eBay.

Here are the previous PORSCHE DESIGN driving shoes I had. I sold them and a few other pairs of mostly white shoes because I had too many white ones.

Since PORSCHE DESIGN cannot use the family's official crest like the cars do, they made do with adidas logo in a gold field instead.

Here is a pair of GOODYEAR adidas driving shoes. I have another pair of these in brown suede leather (this white pair was also sold) and Nancy has some Goodyear adidas as well.

White on white stripes seems a little silly to me. But I forgive PORSCHE DESIGN for the current pair. With the script across the body, row upon row, the stripes are more discernible. 

Nancy, who is ever supportive of my interests, as I am of hers, bought me this book, a First Edition, which tells the tale of two German brothers, Adolf and Rudolph Dassler who struggled to get a shoe company going. Eventually Rudy left Adi to form his own sports shoe company which he named PUMA. 

I recently saw a film which was made on the same subject. Prior to reading the book I never knew this story. I have far more adidas than I do PUMA, but the ones I do have, I like.

Why did I bring this up? Why PUMA and FERRARI formed an alliance in which PUMA makes driving shoes with FERRARI's approval which feature the famous Prancing Horse logo. 

A bit of trivia, Ferrari could never trademark the prancing horse. In fact, Breda, an Italian train car building company also uses the prancing horse on it's cars.

Anyway, since I am writing to you about cars/shoes, here are two pairs of Ferrari Puma driving shoes I used to have.

I like the mirror-image the two shoes make.

They too used silver accents on these shoes. Note the subdued PUMA swoosh on these and the white ones below. 

There is a certain stigma to ownership of certain supercars, even Corvettes have a similar stigma of snobbishness. I recall that is why I got rid of these two pairs.

Plenty of grippiness to these soles, unlike the PORSCHE DESIGN soles.

But white soles? OK for walking in snow, but not so good for walking in the dirty world in which we live and walk.

I hope you enjoyed reading my humble blog. I really enjoy researching and writing it. Your kind words and comments, either below or on Facebook are greatly appreciated as well.

For a look at my previous article on another unique pair of adidas which Nancy bought me for my birthday, plus links to other shoes related articles, click this link:

The Robb Collections: Adidas Fame and International Appeal Cannot Be Denied. Found: Adidas Tokio Solar HM, A Collaboration with Japanese Firms

Scott

August 26, 2021

#437