Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the
Speaker 1: tech are you. Well? We are on holiday here at
Speaker 1: iHeart Podcasts, but of course I love butting out episodes anyway,
Speaker 1: so I thought it would bring you a classic that's
Speaker 1: not even that old. It actually originally published in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: but it's becoming a classic tradition in tech stuff that
Speaker 1: on Christmas Day, December twenty fifth, we publish Lighting Up
Speaker 1: the Holidays, which looks at the history of incorporating lights
Speaker 1: in winter holidays. So I hope that you are all
Speaker 1: healthy and happy and safe and surrounded by loved ones,
Speaker 1: whether you celebrate Christmas or not. And let's sit back
Speaker 1: and listen to this episode of tech Stuff Lighting Up
Speaker 1: the Holidays, which originally published November twenty seventh, twenty nineteen. Now,
Speaker 1: before I dive into all of that, I want to
Speaker 1: acknowledge a few things first. While I'll be talking about
Speaker 1: Christmas lights, there are many people of different faiths, ethnicities, regions, etc.
Speaker 1: Who celebrate special days during the winter months, and lights
Speaker 1: nearly always play an important part in those various observations,
Speaker 1: which makes total sense because the days are shorter in
Speaker 1: the winter and thus we have more hours of darkness
Speaker 1: for every twenty four hour period, so lights would clearly
Speaker 1: be an important part of any celebration during that part
Speaker 1: of the year. So, for example, the manora in the
Speaker 1: Jewish faith symbolizes how the Maccabee's, when rededicating the Holy Temple,
Speaker 1: which they had just won back from the Greeks, used
Speaker 1: a single bottle of oil to light the manora used
Speaker 1: in the rededication ceremony for eight nights, even though bottle
Speaker 1: should only have lasted a single night. Then there's also
Speaker 1: the celebration of Kwanza, where families light candles in the kenara,
Speaker 1: and the candles represent the seven principles of the holiday.
Speaker 1: But getting back to Christmas lights, there's actually an older
Speaker 1: tradition than the sort of Christmas tree lights, in which
Speaker 1: Christian families would set out candles within view of a
Speaker 1: window as a symbol to alert fellow Christians that the
Speaker 1: family inside the house they were made up of observing Christians,
Speaker 1: and that fellow Christians would be welcome to come into
Speaker 1: that house to worship with the family. But the Christmas
Speaker 1: lights we see every year really have their roots pun
Speaker 1: intended in a Germanic tradition of the Christmas tree. So
Speaker 1: why would you ever cut down a tree and bring
Speaker 1: it inside in the first place. Well, again, one of
Speaker 1: those things that makes sense as you start to think
Speaker 1: about all the details. Plants like fir trees and holly
Speaker 1: remain green even in the winter, which otherwise pretty much
Speaker 1: wipes out everything else and makes it brown and dead
Speaker 1: or appearing to be dead. So these plants became symbols
Speaker 1: of resilience and everlasting life. So people would cut down
Speaker 1: some of those plants and bring them indoors to remind
Speaker 1: them of that. But you know, then the plants would
Speaker 1: eventually just dry out and turn brown, and thus negate
Speaker 1: the whole reason for bringing them inside. But you know,
Speaker 1: humans have never been rational creatures. There are some unsupported
Speaker 1: legends surrounding the origins of the German Christmas tree, sometimes
Speaker 1: referred to as the Tannenbaum, but really Tannenbaum is more
Speaker 1: of a word for fur trees in general, not just
Speaker 1: those all decked out with bowels of holly and whatnot.
Speaker 1: But one legend has it that Martin Luther, the Reformer
Speaker 1: who caused a bit of a ruckus in the fifteen
Speaker 1: hundreds when he, you know, decided to criticize the Catholic Church,
Speaker 1: that he had started the tradition of the Christmas tree. However,
Speaker 1: the earliest written accounts on record that mention this tradition
Speaker 1: date to sixteen oh five. Now that doesn't mean that's
Speaker 1: when the tradition started, of course, it's just the earliest
Speaker 1: written account that we happened to have. Scholars think the
Speaker 1: tradition might date back at least to the mid sixteenth century,
Speaker 1: though that would still be after Martin Luther had died.
Speaker 1: So anyway, that sixteen oh five account, all it says
Speaker 1: is that the people would set up Christmas trees in
Speaker 1: their rooms in Strasbourg. There's no mention of lights in
Speaker 1: this particular account, but the decorations consisted of things like
Speaker 1: roses made out of paper and various foods being shoved
Speaker 1: into the tree, things like apples or cookies and sugar.
Speaker 1: It was very food centric. In fact, there was a
Speaker 1: tradition of raiding the Christmas tree on one of the
Speaker 1: days of Christmas, where the kids get to go and
Speaker 1: actually grab treats from the tree and eat them. The
Speaker 1: first written account to bring up the to tail about
Speaker 1: lights in the Christmas tree dates to sixteen sixty. People
Speaker 1: in Germany would pin or otherwise attach candles to branches
Speaker 1: of these trees, and again, frequently these are trees that
Speaker 1: have been cut down and put up inside a house,
Speaker 1: not just trees out in the woods somewhere. Generally speaking,
Speaker 1: the practice was to light the candles only for a
Speaker 1: very short time before you blew them out again. And
Speaker 1: you were never supposed to leave a tree unattended, because,
Speaker 1: as you can imagine, combining a cut tree that might
Speaker 1: be kind of dry with open flames is a recipe
Speaker 1: for a disaster. And in fact, there were more than
Speaker 1: a few cases of fires with these trees, some of
Speaker 1: them ending in catastrophe and tragedy. But I'm sure the
Speaker 1: effect was really nice, leading right up to the moment
Speaker 1: where everything went ablaze. Okay, so let's skip ahead to
Speaker 1: the eighteen hundreds. At that point the tradition extended beyond Germany.
Speaker 1: A Harvard professor named Charles Fallen, inspired by story that
Speaker 1: he had heard in Europe, did a lit up Christmas
Speaker 1: tree here in America. This was believed to be the
Speaker 1: first lit Christmas tree in America, or at least the
Speaker 1: first one on record. In the eighteen forties, in England,
Speaker 1: Queen Victoria and Prince Albert had a Christmas tree famously
Speaker 1: depicted in an illustration that was published in a newspaper
Speaker 1: that likely helped boost the practice over in England. Prince
Speaker 1: Albert brought this over from his homeland in Saxony. So
Speaker 1: people came up with new ways to attach the candles
Speaker 1: to trees, you know, they found more improved methods that
Speaker 1: would catch the wax and things like that. However, there
Speaker 1: was still very much a danger of fire with this
Speaker 1: particular approach. Then in the later eighteen hundreds, we get
Speaker 1: to Thomas Edison, the inventor and entrepreneur who is spending
Speaker 1: a lot of time and resources trying to perfect the
Speaker 1: light bulb. Which he did not invent the light bulb,
Speaker 1: but he did improve upon it, or rather, I should
Speaker 1: say his lab improved upon it. So when he and
Speaker 1: his engineers managed to make a light bulb that could
Speaker 1: last more than just a few hours and could be
Speaker 1: suitable for general use as opposed to stuff like the
Speaker 1: more dangerous arc lamps that while extremely bright, were not
Speaker 1: practical for everyday applications. He then had to figure out
Speaker 1: a way, how do I sell this idea to cities,
Speaker 1: right to city officials and then further on to the
Speaker 1: general public. So he wanted to convince Manhattan officials that
Speaker 1: his company should be the one to provide electricity and
Speaker 1: light all of Manhattan. So he had his employees hang
Speaker 1: lights during the holiday season in eighteen eighty on the
Speaker 1: outside of Menlo Park, which was an easy view of
Speaker 1: trains passing by, and it got a lot of attention. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the inventors who was working at his Menlo
Speaker 1: Park facility was Edward Hibberd Johnson. Johnson had actually been
Speaker 1: responsible for giving Edison a job at the Automatic Telegraph Company,
Speaker 1: but later on Johnson would end up working closely with
Speaker 1: Edison to develop men Low Park itself and became an
Speaker 1: inventor and executive at the Edison Light Company. So it's
Speaker 1: funny because he helped get Edison a job early and
Speaker 1: then he ended up working for Edison later. It was
Speaker 1: at the Menlo Park facility where Johnson developed string lights,
Speaker 1: and these were lights that were wired together in series
Speaker 1: and would serve as the basis for Christmas lights. Just
Speaker 1: moving forward from that point, he used those lights to
Speaker 1: decorate a Christmas tree, and so Johnson is sometimes referred
Speaker 1: to as the father of electric Christmas tree lights because
Speaker 1: the original version, the earlier version that Edison did that
Speaker 1: was a string of lights they hung up on a building.
Speaker 1: This was the first time where someone was using electric
Speaker 1: Christmas lights to replace the candles that were found on
Speaker 1: the Germanic Christmas trees. His lights, by the way, had
Speaker 1: bulbs that were red, white, and blue. Is quite the
Speaker 1: patriotic Christmas tree, and like Edison, Johnson intended that for
Speaker 1: this not just to be a festive display in the
Speaker 1: spirit of America and the holiday season, but also a
Speaker 1: marketing effort to get more people to support and want
Speaker 1: and adopt electric lights. There was a general distrust in
Speaker 1: electricity around this time, so these were the ways in
Speaker 1: which Edison and his associates could try to win people
Speaker 1: over to this new technology, and adoption did not take
Speaker 1: off right away. So, for one thing, no New York
Speaker 1: based reporters wrote about this Christmas tree at all, but
Speaker 1: one reporter for a Detroit newspaper did publish an account
Speaker 1: of what it was like seeing the Christmas tree all
Speaker 1: lit up. The next big development in the adoption of
Speaker 1: Christmas lights would come in eighteen ninety five when US
Speaker 1: President Grover Cleveland incorporated them in decorations for the Christmas
Speaker 1: Tree at the White House. So we're going to go
Speaker 1: off on a little tangent here some fun trivia facts
Speaker 1: about Grover Cleveland. So he's the only US president whoever
Speaker 1: served two non consecutive terms, meaning he was both our
Speaker 1: twenty second and our twenty fourth president of the United States.
Speaker 1: The lighting of the Christmas tree would be during his
Speaker 1: second term as president. And just in case you're wondering
Speaker 1: the twenty third president, the one who interrupted those two
Speaker 1: terms was Benjamin Harrison, the grandson of our ninth President,
Speaker 1: William Henry Harrison. Sorry I recently I have been showing
Speaker 1: up on a lot of ridiculous history episodes, and sometimes
Speaker 1: that stuff just kind of sticks with you. Anyway. Cleveland's tree,
Speaker 1: Grover Cleveland's tree featured one hundred lights with bulbs of
Speaker 1: various colors, and it must have been a really impressive
Speaker 1: sight for the time. Some of the movers and shakers
Speaker 1: in America, in other words, people had a ton of
Speaker 1: cash to burn they began to put up their own
Speaker 1: decorated and lit Christmas trees, but it was not something
Speaker 1: the average person could do because at that time, most
Speaker 1: of the United States wasn't wired for electricity, so to
Speaker 1: even have a lit Christmas tree with electric lights, you
Speaker 1: would have to set up a generator. You'd also typically
Speaker 1: have to hire an electrician to actually wire it up,
Speaker 1: and in today's money, that would mean that decorating a
Speaker 1: tree could cost at least a couple of thousands of dollars,
Speaker 1: so only the hoity toity folks who wanted to show
Speaker 1: off their wealth could really afford to have a Christmas
Speaker 1: tree with electric lights at that time. Anyway, over the
Speaker 1: course of the early nineteen hundreds, electric lights began to
Speaker 1: gain popularity as people became more comfortable with the idea
Speaker 1: of electricity. And it's really no wonder that folks were
Speaker 1: nervous at first. Fire is something you can see, at
Speaker 1: least in most cases, but electricity could be deadly but
Speaker 1: was also invisible, and Edison's company had already engaged in
Speaker 1: some pretty heavy smear campaigns against alternating current, since Edison
Speaker 1: was pushing direct current as a means to distribute electricity regionally,
Speaker 1: and a lot of those events and demonstrations that his
Speaker 1: company held involved showing off how deadly electricity could be,
Speaker 1: so they were kind of feeding into that fear. But
Speaker 1: the allure of the lights was undeniable. And but that
Speaker 1: I mean not just Christmas lights, I mean your run
Speaker 1: of the bill light bulbs. Now, even in nineteen oh
Speaker 1: three when General Electric introduced string Christmas light kits, which
Speaker 1: will let people string up their own lights at home
Speaker 1: without necessarily the use of an electrician, it was still
Speaker 1: really expensive a string of lights, and a General Electric
Speaker 1: actually referred to these strings as festoons. Anyway. The string
Speaker 1: of lights consisted of eight whole light bulb sockets and
Speaker 1: they would hold Edison light bulbs, and it costs the
Speaker 1: equivalent of about three hundred dollars today. That's just the lights.
Speaker 1: And this was not something that the average family would
Speaker 1: necessarily spring for. Also, you wouldn't buy these kits. You
Speaker 1: would rent them for three hundred dollars, so after the
Speaker 1: rental period you would actually have to return them. So yikes. Now,
Speaker 1: the bulbs on these things were small, round bulbs, almost
Speaker 1: like manature incandescent light bulbs. Actually that's exactly what they were,
Speaker 1: but I'm talking more about the form factor rather than
Speaker 1: the actual lighting mechanism. In nineteen nineteen, General Electric introduced
Speaker 1: a new bulb shape and filament. It was more of
Speaker 1: a flame shape, is that sort of classic, large, kind
Speaker 1: of clunky, retro looking light bulb. That was the general
Speaker 1: shape that they introduced, and it had a filament made
Speaker 1: out of Mazda tungsten. The filament is the part of
Speaker 1: the incandescent bulb that actually glows. The company would use
Speaker 1: Mazda filaments in all sorts of lamp bulbs, not just
Speaker 1: Christmas ones. Now, there were a couple of possibly apocryphal
Speaker 1: stories about some smaller companies around this time that played
Speaker 1: an important role in popularizing Christmas lights. One of those
Speaker 1: stories is about a telephone company employee named Ralph E.
Speaker 1: Morris who at some point. Different versions of this story
Speaker 1: can date it to either eighteen ninety five, the same
Speaker 1: year that Grover Cleveland was lighting up the White House,
Speaker 1: or nineteen oh eight. There's a pretty big discrepancy, but
Speaker 1: the stories say that he looked at a telephone switchboard,
Speaker 1: and telephone sweatchboards had these little tiny light bulbs mounted
Speaker 1: in them that would light up when you were making connections,
Speaker 1: and he thought those little light bulbs might make nice
Speaker 1: Christmas decorations. So he took a bunch of those little
Speaker 1: light bulbs a bunch of telephone wire, wired them all together,
Speaker 1: electrified the wire, and made up a little lit Christmas tree,
Speaker 1: a little fake lit Christmas tree, because the story says
Speaker 1: that he made a makeshift Christmas tree out of feathers.
Speaker 1: I don't know exactly how he did it, but that's
Speaker 1: what the story says. His son would later write an
Speaker 1: article claiming that his father invented Christmas lights, which wasn't
Speaker 1: quite accurate. They predated this, but I'm pretty sure it
Speaker 1: was an honest mistake, not something that was done, you know, maliciously. Now.
Speaker 1: The other possibly apocryphal story involves a guy named Albert Sidaka.
Speaker 1: This story goes that when Sadaka was fifteen, he heard
Speaker 1: about a terrible tragedy involving a deadly fire that began
Speaker 1: when a Christmas tree lit with candles caught fire and
Speaker 1: people died as a result. His family made novelty lights
Speaker 1: with white bulbs, so he thought, hey, how about we
Speaker 1: change out those regular bulbs with bulbs of different colors
Speaker 1: and we use electric lights instead of candles to light
Speaker 1: up a Christmas tree. According to this story, he and
Speaker 1: his brothers began to do just that, and a few
Speaker 1: years later they led an effort to bring together several
Speaker 1: small competing light companies. They were all going for the
Speaker 1: same customers, and they formed the National Outfit Manufacturers Association,
Speaker 1: or NOMA, which would become its own company and by
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty five became the leading manufacturing company for electric
Speaker 1: Christmas lights. Now, as power companies wired up the United
Speaker 1: States for electricity, the popularity of electric Christmas lights began
Speaker 1: to grow. In nineteen twenty a hardware store owner in
Speaker 1: California named Frederick Nash decorated trees outside his establishment, and
Speaker 1: that quickly grew into a tradition in which a nine
Speaker 1: blocks stretch of the road in front of his business
Speaker 1: would end up having trees just draped in lights, and
Speaker 1: it became the first big documented outdoor Christmas lights display.
Speaker 1: When we come back, i'll talk more about the evolution
Speaker 1: of Christmas lights, and then we'll dive into how the
Speaker 1: heck they work, and in the case of traditional Christmas lights,
Speaker 1: how they don't work if just one bulb goes bad.
Speaker 1: But let's take a quick break. I've got a little
Speaker 1: bit more to go on to the history of Christmas
Speaker 1: lights and some of the interesting things about them before
Speaker 1: we get into how they work. So by the late
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties, electric Christmas lights had become a popular new tradition,
Speaker 1: with homeowners and businesses alike using them to create bright,
Speaker 1: colorful displays, and in some cases they went a little
Speaker 1: bit overboard. A few places became truly famous for their
Speaker 1: decorated trees and buildings. When the United States entered into
Speaker 1: World War Two and there was a concern about the
Speaker 1: possibility of sar cities being bombed, there were blackout orders
Speaker 1: in various cities like New York, and that meant that
Speaker 1: Christmas lights would actually go dark in nineteen forty four
Speaker 1: in New York City, But with the war's end the
Speaker 1: following year, people made up for lost time. Meanwhile, tastes
Speaker 1: began to change in America. Families in the late nineteen
Speaker 1: fifties were introduced to a new invention, the aluminum Christmas tree. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't even I can't believe this really happened either, guys.
Speaker 1: These were trees made out of aluminum, a space age
Speaker 1: material that was clearly so much better than a freshly
Speaker 1: cut fur tree. However, the Christmas lights of the day,
Speaker 1: which were still incandescent bulbs in sometimes questionable wires, would
Speaker 1: get way too hot for aluminum trees. They also could
Speaker 1: potentially create an electric shock hazard because aluminum can conduct electricity. Plus,
Speaker 1: those aluminum trees had needles quote unquote made out of foil,
Speaker 1: which would easily melt. So instead of hanging electric lights
Speaker 1: on the tree, companies began to manufacture lamps that had
Speaker 1: a rotating color wheel. And it's just what it sounds like,
Speaker 1: and it's not all that different from what was inside
Speaker 1: old mechanical television sets before electric TV was invented. So
Speaker 1: you've got a bulb that's what provides the light, kind
Speaker 1: of like a projector, and in front of the bulb,
Speaker 1: you have a wheel that has different panes of colored plastic,
Speaker 1: and this wheel rotates past the bulb and different colors
Speaker 1: of light shine out of your glorious lamp towards your
Speaker 1: even more glorious aluminum Christmas tree. It was a thing, y'all. Now,
Speaker 1: I can't say I personally found it appealing, but back
Speaker 1: then it was selling like gangbusters. Unfortunately for companies like Noma,
Speaker 1: the leading manufacturer of Christmas lights. It meant that there
Speaker 1: was a drastic drop in Christmas lights sales as these
Speaker 1: aluminum trees became all the rage. Actually end up going
Speaker 1: into bankruptcy and today it exists as a brand name.
Speaker 1: But that's about it. The era of the Illumina tree
Speaker 1: lasted about a decade, upon which time many people either
Speaker 1: went back to using the previously live trees or they
Speaker 1: switched to more natural looking artificial trees. And that meant
Speaker 1: the electric lights were back baby. However, because of the
Speaker 1: American manufacturers going out of business during the reign of
Speaker 1: illunum Terror, the Christmas lights on the market mostly came
Speaker 1: from other countries, so America would no longer be king
Speaker 1: of the electric Christmas light. All right. Now we're getting
Speaker 1: up to about nineteen seventy and the introduction of the
Speaker 1: mini light. So for a very long time, the typical
Speaker 1: Christmas light was a five or ten watt bulb, typically
Speaker 1: the size of a night light bulb, those little kind
Speaker 1: of cone shaped bulbs that I was talking about, the
Speaker 1: retro style, They were pretty big. These were the type
Speaker 1: of lights that I grew up with when I was
Speaker 1: a kid. That's the kind had on our trees, the big,
Speaker 1: big bright lights. I still miss those, But they drew
Speaker 1: a lot of power because a string of fifty five
Speaker 1: watt bulbs means that you're consuming two hundred and fifty watts,
Speaker 1: and most people were using multiple strands, like one string
Speaker 1: wouldn't do it. You might have three strands, three to
Speaker 1: five for a tree, maybe five to ten for your house.
Speaker 1: So you're consuming an enormous amount of power when you're
Speaker 1: having this stuff lit up. So the Christmas lights were
Speaker 1: greedy for electricity, then they pushed electric bills pretty high.
Speaker 1: They would also get really hot, which you know I
Speaker 1: mentioned back with the aluminum trees. Touching a bulb could
Speaker 1: give you a little bit of a minor burn, as
Speaker 1: I found out on more than one occasion when I
Speaker 1: was a kid, because I had three qualities that guaranteed
Speaker 1: I was going to get burned. First, I was curious,
Speaker 1: a second, I was foolish or maybe stupid, and third
Speaker 1: I had a really short memory, I guess. Anyway, the
Speaker 1: bulbs were popular, and they were colorful, but they were
Speaker 1: also wasteful and expensive. The mini light would become a
Speaker 1: popular alternative to that bulky hot expensive Christmas light of
Speaker 1: the past. The mini lights are, as the name implies, smaller.
Speaker 1: They only need two point five volts of electricity, and
Speaker 1: they don't get nearly as hot, although they are still
Speaker 1: incandescent bulbs, so they still do generate heat, they're just
Speaker 1: not as hot as those larger bulbs were. It does, however,
Speaker 1: raise a question, how do you supply electricity to a
Speaker 1: two and a half volt socket if your source is
Speaker 1: an outlet that's putting out one hundred and twenty volts.
Speaker 1: This is a good time to transition into a talk
Speaker 1: about circuits. So a quick reminder in electricity, voltage is
Speaker 1: sort of like water pressure in a water system. It's
Speaker 1: how hard the electricity is being pushed through. You can
Speaker 1: think of it like that. It's not exactly the same,
Speaker 1: but that's a rough analogy. It's the oomph behind the
Speaker 1: movement of electric and a one hundred and twenty volt
Speaker 1: supply far overshadows a two and a half volt load.
Speaker 1: So imagine like having a fire hose of water directed
Speaker 1: at you. You've got a little shot glass that you're
Speaker 1: filling up and dumping out. It would just be way
Speaker 1: too much. But these Christmas lights were chained together in series,
Speaker 1: which meant one bulb socket connects to the next bulb
Speaker 1: socket in the same circuit, and so on. So if
Speaker 1: you've got two two and a half volt sockets, you
Speaker 1: end up with a load that requires five volts. If
Speaker 1: you were to multiply two and a half volts by
Speaker 1: I don't know, let's say forty eight, you'd get one
Speaker 1: hundred twenty. So yeah, if you string together forty eight
Speaker 1: light bulb sockets and each one of those is a
Speaker 1: two and a half volt socket, you end up with
Speaker 1: a full load what requires one hundred and twenty volts.
Speaker 1: Problem solved now. Typically companies would actually bump that up
Speaker 1: to fifty light sockets per series, and those extra two
Speaker 1: sockets would mean that each individual bulb would be slightly,
Speaker 1: maybe even imperceptibly dimmer than it would be if you
Speaker 1: only had forty eight, but it wouldn't be so dim
Speaker 1: that it would make a huge difference. So imagine a
Speaker 1: pathway from an electric outlet that goes down a line
Speaker 1: of wires, and those wires connect to fifty bulbs in series,
Speaker 1: So bulb one, then bulb two, than bulb three, et cetera.
Speaker 1: This represents the path that electricity takes and along the way,
Speaker 1: the electricity is doing work in the form of producing
Speaker 1: light with those little light bulbs. And here's where a
Speaker 1: drawback of Christmas lights comes in. Let's say one of
Speaker 1: those bulbs burns out. Well, a burnt out bulb is
Speaker 1: going to break that pathway for the electricity. It opens
Speaker 1: the circuit, and because the path is broken and electricity
Speaker 1: needs that clear, unbroken path, the whole string of lights
Speaker 1: will go out. This is how Christmas lights used to be,
Speaker 1: where you'd have to go down a line of dark
Speaker 1: lights and you would swap out one bulb for another
Speaker 1: over and over. You would be searching for the one
Speaker 1: bulb that caused the problem, and often it would lead
Speaker 1: to people chucking out a string entirely and just replacing
Speaker 1: it because trying to find that one berdtout bulb and
Speaker 1: a string of fifty just wasn't fun. And it was
Speaker 1: even worse if more than one bulb had been affected,
Speaker 1: because you might replace one bad bulb and never know
Speaker 1: it because there's a second or a third bad bulb
Speaker 1: in that same string. It was infuriating. Now on top
Speaker 1: of that, later electric lights would have even longer strings
Speaker 1: like one hundred, one hundred and fifty or two hundred lights. Now,
Speaker 1: in order to achieve this, because I was just talking
Speaker 1: about how if you put these in series it creates
Speaker 1: that greater load. Well, engineers were able to kind of
Speaker 1: cheat with this. They were using both series circuits and
Speaker 1: parallel circuits for these lights. Now, as I mentioned, a
Speaker 1: series circuit strings one electric load after another along the
Speaker 1: same electrical path or circuit. So you can think of
Speaker 1: that as like one long street with houses on either
Speaker 1: side of the street, and the houses represent the load
Speaker 1: on the electric circuit. So in this example, with a
Speaker 1: string that has fifty lights, think of a street and
Speaker 1: there are fifty houses twenty five on either side of
Speaker 1: the street. So to visit a house a little further
Speaker 1: down the street, you have to pass all the other
Speaker 1: ones first. Parallel circuits create multiple paths, an independent pathway
Speaker 1: for each circuit, so different loads are on their own
Speaker 1: distinct pathways. So with a string of one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty Christmas lights, for example, you would actually have three
Speaker 1: fifty lights series circuits. Right, So you've got one string
Speaker 1: of fifty lights in series, a second string of fifty
Speaker 1: lights in series, and a third string of fifty lights
Speaker 1: in series, but all three are then connected in parallel
Speaker 1: with each other in the street analogy, this would be
Speaker 1: like having three parallel streets that all connect to the
Speaker 1: same main road. Now, with this kind of string of lights,
Speaker 1: if one bulb were to go out, only the other
Speaker 1: bulbs in that same series circuit would go dark. So
Speaker 1: with one hundred and fifty light string, it would mean
Speaker 1: one third of those lights would go dark. Right, fifty
Speaker 1: lights would go out, but the other one hundred would
Speaker 1: stay lit because they were actually still in those parallel circuits.
Speaker 1: They were independent of that one fifty light string. You
Speaker 1: still have a problem with a third of your lights
Speaker 1: going dark, though, engineers figured out how to solve this
Speaker 1: issue by creating what's called a shunt. Now, essentially, a
Speaker 1: shunt is an alternative circuitry path that electricity can pass
Speaker 1: through even if a load has otherwise failed. So in
Speaker 1: this case, if a light bulb were to burn out,
Speaker 1: the light bulb would go dark, but the shunt would
Speaker 1: take over as the path for electricity to flow through,
Speaker 1: and that way the other bulbs in that series would
Speaker 1: still stay lit. So how does that work? Well, First,
Speaker 1: the shunt is lined with insulating material and that boosts
Speaker 1: the electric resistance of the shunt. And this is important
Speaker 1: because if the shunt had an equal or lower electrical
Speaker 1: resistance than the filament inside the light bulb, the electricity
Speaker 1: would bypass the bulb altogether and just go through the shunt.
Speaker 1: That means you wouldn't have a string of Christmas lights. Instead,
Speaker 1: you would have a really bad extension cord that was
Speaker 1: eating up a lot of power. And more than that,
Speaker 1: it would start to heat up and could potentially pose
Speaker 1: as a fire hazard, and that's no bueno. So this
Speaker 1: is a good opportunity to talk about short circuits. A
Speaker 1: short circuit and I am not talking about the movie
Speaker 1: that featured Johnny five the robot. A short circuit is
Speaker 1: when electricity encounters a pathway of lower resistance than the
Speaker 1: path it is supposed to follow. And yeah, the path
Speaker 1: of least resistance is a thing. We see it in
Speaker 1: nature all the time. If there are multiple ways for
Speaker 1: something to happen, the way that has the least obstacles
Speaker 1: tends to be the one we end up with. Electricity
Speaker 1: is going through its circuit and suddenly there's a detour.
Speaker 1: Something has made contact with a circuit that represents a
Speaker 1: lower resistance pathway. The electricity takes the lower resistance pathway.
Speaker 1: That's just nature. The electricity skips out on doing whatever
Speaker 1: it was supposed to do, like light a light bulb,
Speaker 1: and rushes down this new pass Now at a steady voltage,
Speaker 1: this means you get a spike in current. This is
Speaker 1: because the voltage is that pressure I was talking about,
Speaker 1: and the pressure remains the same, but the reduction in
Speaker 1: electrical resistance means it's easier for electricity to flow through
Speaker 1: that part of the circuit. So the current has to increase.
Speaker 1: We express this mathematically by saying voltage is current times resistance.
Speaker 1: So if voltage is staying the same, it's not changing
Speaker 1: and electrical resistance is decreasing, current, by mathematical definition has
Speaker 1: to increase to make up the difference, and an increase
Speaker 1: in current can become dangerous or even deadly. Now, because
Speaker 1: of that risk, engineers began to include fuses in Christmas lights.
Speaker 1: The fuse in a Christmas light is kind of a
Speaker 1: strip of thin wire that's near the plug end of
Speaker 1: a string of lights, the part that actually plugs into
Speaker 1: the wall. That's where the fuse is. It's rated for
Speaker 1: a certain maximum of current, and if the current increases
Speaker 1: beyond that maximum because of a short typically then this
Speaker 1: wire will actually kind of burn through, and then it
Speaker 1: leaves a gap, and that gap ends up having such
Speaker 1: a high electrical resistance that electricity cannot flow through the
Speaker 1: string of lights and they all go dark. So the
Speaker 1: fuse is typically replaceable, and in these strings of lights
Speaker 1: you can even open up a little window and put
Speaker 1: in a replacement fuse if the one that you have
Speaker 1: in there has burnt out for any reason. So that
Speaker 1: is sort of a safety measure in case of a
Speaker 1: short circuit. All right, Now let's get back to the shunt.
Speaker 1: So this insulating wire round, this shunt typically wraps around
Speaker 1: the base of the filament in a Christmas light bulb,
Speaker 1: and because it has a higher electrical resistance than the
Speaker 1: filament does, electricity is not going to go through the
Speaker 1: shunt normally, it'll go through the filament instead. Now, if
Speaker 1: the filament begins to burn out, it starts to get
Speaker 1: really hot, and that heat is enough to melt the
Speaker 1: insulating material off of the shunt, So the bulb burns out.
Speaker 1: The shunt wire essentially sheds its insulation. It's melted off.
Speaker 1: As a result, the shunt becomes a lower resistance pathway
Speaker 1: for electricity, and electricity can then pass through the light
Speaker 1: bulb's socket and keep the other lights on the series lit.
Speaker 1: It means you can actually spot the burnout bulb in
Speaker 1: a string and replace it. You don't have to worry
Speaker 1: about one bulb going out and everything going out. You'll
Speaker 1: just see that one bulb burnout and you can then
Speaker 1: swap it out. Now, one other thing that can happen
Speaker 1: that can be frustrating is that some of the lights
Speaker 1: are pretty cheaply made and the bulbs can be loose
Speaker 1: in their sockets, and if they're not making good contact
Speaker 1: with the parts of the socket where the electricity flows through,
Speaker 1: then you're not going to get electricity flowing through the
Speaker 1: series because it'll be like an open circuit or a
Speaker 1: circuit where the switch is in the off position. So
Speaker 1: in that case, you have to go down the length
Speaker 1: of the wire and check to make sure that each
Speaker 1: bulb is plugged in properly for electricity to flow through
Speaker 1: that series of bulbs. Some Christmas lights actually put the
Speaker 1: shunt into the socket itself rather than inside the bulb,
Speaker 1: which helps sidestep that problem. So in those cases, just
Speaker 1: like with a burnt out bulb, the affected bulb would
Speaker 1: be the one that was not lit, but the rest
Speaker 1: of it should still be shining brightly. Now, when we
Speaker 1: come back, I'll talk a bit more about how the
Speaker 1: series Circuits and Christmas Lights created a headache for the
Speaker 1: electricians on the Netflix series Stranger Things, as well as
Speaker 1: a couple of other interesting facts. But first, let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break. Okay, So, in case you've not seen
Speaker 1: the series Stranger Things, let me explain why Christmas lights
Speaker 1: are important and why they posed a big challenge to
Speaker 1: the crew of that show. So in the show, there's
Speaker 1: a boy named Will Buyers who is trapped in a
Speaker 1: sort of parallel dimension and he can't interact directly with
Speaker 1: people in our dimension, but he discovers that he can
Speaker 1: affect electrical devices. The show is set in the nineteen
Speaker 1: eighties and Will comes from sort of a lower middle
Speaker 1: class family and they still have the big, bulky Christmas
Speaker 1: lights they haven't switched over to the smaller ones. And
Speaker 1: when Will's mother, Joyce, figures out that Will can affect
Speaker 1: these lights, she devises away fro him to communicate with her.
Speaker 1: She labels a string of Christmas lights with letters of
Speaker 1: the alphabet, and that means will can effectively type out
Speaker 1: messages by making individual lights go off and on, which
Speaker 1: is a clever idea for a show. It's also not
Speaker 1: how Christmas lights work because, as I've described in this podcast,
Speaker 1: they're supposed to all be in series and you can't
Speaker 1: turn them off and on individually because they're all in
Speaker 1: a series circuit. They're strung in such a way that
Speaker 1: turning off one means they all go off. So how
Speaker 1: did the show get around that? Well, it was surprisingly challenging.
Speaker 1: The solution was sort of straightforward, but it wasn't easy
Speaker 1: or convenient. The electrician had to wire each bulb individually
Speaker 1: to a switchboard that could supply electricity to that bulb. Now,
Speaker 1: that also meant having to control the voltage that was
Speaker 1: going to each bulb, since they were no longer in
Speaker 1: series and the load wouldn't be shared across the whole wire.
Speaker 1: So you had to control the voltage to be appropriate
Speaker 1: for the individual bulbs and then isolate it from all
Speaker 1: the other bulbs. And you had to do it twenty
Speaker 1: six times, or at least however many times. Was needed
Speaker 1: to make sure all the letters that were being used
Speaker 1: were wired up properly. You might have been able to
Speaker 1: get away without wiring up say X or Z or
Speaker 1: some of the other letters that aren't as common. The
Speaker 1: switchboard was effectively a keyboard, so you could like press
Speaker 1: the a button that would activate a switch and the
Speaker 1: switch would open the circuit, meaning it breaks the pathway.
Speaker 1: And because it breaks the pathway, the light would go out,
Speaker 1: and if you close the circuit, if you close the switch,
Speaker 1: that would restore the pathway the light bulb would come
Speaker 1: on again. So that wiring was probably a huge pain
Speaker 1: in the neck because it meant having to do this
Speaker 1: for multiple letters and making sure each set of wires
Speaker 1: had the appropriate label on the switchboard, not to mention
Speaker 1: being sure that no bulb was going to get too
Speaker 1: much voltage for it to handle. And on top of that,
Speaker 1: the wiring had to be hidden so the camera would
Speaker 1: make it look like it was just a normal string
Speaker 1: of Christmas lights. You couldn't see all these individual wires
Speaker 1: going to each bulb. It would break the illusion. So
Speaker 1: why you wouldn't call this a high tech special effect?
Speaker 1: It was one that required a lot of work and
Speaker 1: trial by error to get it just right, to produce
Speaker 1: the effect that the series directors were looking for. Now,
Speaker 1: we're not quite done with the evolution of Christmas lights.
Speaker 1: We've got a few more things to chat about. As
Speaker 1: the novelty song The Twelve Pains of Christmas reveals, Christmas
Speaker 1: lights present their own frustrating challenges. If they're not stored properly,
Speaker 1: they become a tangled mess. There's the problem of one
Speaker 1: going out and then they all go out. If you
Speaker 1: have a shuntless kind of string of Christmas lights at
Speaker 1: any rate, then there's the line that used to make
Speaker 1: me crack up as a kid. This will tell you
Speaker 1: how sophisticated my sense of humor was. Who am I kidding?
Speaker 1: Still is? The line is, now, why the hell are
Speaker 1: they all blinking? Yeah, blinking lights? Okay, there are two
Speaker 1: general ways of creating blinking Christmas lights if you're a manufacturer.
Speaker 1: One of those ways is brilliantly simple and kind of jankie.
Speaker 1: So let's go with that one first. All right, So
Speaker 1: let's say you get a couple of different metals, and
Speaker 1: you create a strip using these two different metals. Maybe
Speaker 1: one side is copper and the other side is you know,
Speaker 1: iron or something. These two metals have slightly different properties,
Speaker 1: and one of the different properties they have is their
Speaker 1: rate of expansion when they get hot. Because one metal
Speaker 1: will expand faster than the other, it causes the strip
Speaker 1: to bend. It curls as one side of the strip
Speaker 1: expands faster than the other one does. These are called
Speaker 1: bimetallic strips, and they're using lots of stuff like thermostats,
Speaker 1: but thermostats are a different podcast. All right. So you've
Speaker 1: got this bimetallic strip and you use it to make
Speaker 1: a circuit path to a filament on a light bulb.
Speaker 1: So the strip itself is acting like a kind of wire.
Speaker 1: Electricity is passing through the strip to the filament. But
Speaker 1: then the filament starts to heat up, and when it
Speaker 1: heats up, it causes the strip to start to bend
Speaker 1: because of that expansion thing I was just talking about.
Speaker 1: The strip bends to a point where it no longer
Speaker 1: makes contact with the filament. And since the electricity was
Speaker 1: flowing through the strip, it means the electrical path is broken,
Speaker 1: right because there's no more contact between the strip and
Speaker 1: the filament. No more electricity goes to the filament, and
Speaker 1: so the light blinks out. Further, This bulb, called a
Speaker 1: blinker bulb, doesn't have a shunt in it, so when
Speaker 1: it goes out, all the other lights in that series
Speaker 1: blink out at the same time. Then the bimetallic strip
Speaker 1: begins to cool down because the filament is no longer glowing,
Speaker 1: so it's no longer putting off heat. And as it
Speaker 1: begins to cool down, it straightens out again. And when
Speaker 1: it straightens out, it makes contact with the filament, which
Speaker 1: causes the circuit to re establish and the lights come
Speaker 1: on again. This process repeats itself over and over until
Speaker 1: the blinker bulb finally burns out and you have to
Speaker 1: replace the darn thing. Now. I love this approach because
Speaker 1: it's a low tech, practical way to create blinking lights,
Speaker 1: and it even includes a little mechanical element in the
Speaker 1: form of those bending strips. I think it's pun intended brilliant. Now,
Speaker 1: the other way to make blinking lights is also brilliant,
Speaker 1: but it's a bit more sophisticated. There are strings of
Speaker 1: lights that come with sixteen function controllers. These controllers have
Speaker 1: four transistors, each of which drives a separate strand of lights,
Speaker 1: so the full string of lights is made up of
Speaker 1: four strands of lights. Further, these lights on these full
Speaker 1: strands are in an interleaving pattern, meaning that you don't
Speaker 1: just get all the lights in one strand followed by
Speaker 1: all the lights in the second strand and so on.
Speaker 1: The string would interleave these strands, so you could have
Speaker 1: something like light one from Strand one, light one from
Speaker 1: Strand two, light one from Strand three, light one from
Speaker 1: Strand four, light two from Strand one, and so on,
Speaker 1: And that way you can apply different effects to each
Speaker 1: strand in the full string, and you could get really
Speaker 1: interesting results. Otherwise, you might up with a tree in
Speaker 1: which the first fifty lights are blinking, the next fifty
Speaker 1: lights are fading in and out, the next fifty are twinkling,
Speaker 1: et cetera. So by doing it this way, you can
Speaker 1: have that effect spread out throughout the entire string of lights,
Speaker 1: and you get a more interesting, varied effect. More recently,
Speaker 1: we've seen LED lights start to replace the old incandescent
Speaker 1: mini lights. The incandescent bulbs work by feeding electricity through
Speaker 1: a filament which heats up and gives off light, but
Speaker 1: LED lights generate light in a totally different way. LEDs
Speaker 1: have electrons moving through a semiconductor material. Now, I've talked
Speaker 1: about this in past episodes, and frankly, I'm running out
Speaker 1: of time in this episode, so I don't feel like
Speaker 1: it can really go into a lot of detail here
Speaker 1: about how it works. But from a sub atomic level,
Speaker 1: here's what's going on. You've got an electron inhabiting a
Speaker 1: certain energy shell around the nucleus of an atom. You
Speaker 1: pour some energy into that atom that causes the electron
Speaker 1: to jump to a higher energy shell a little further
Speaker 1: out from the atom's nucleus. But then you cut off
Speaker 1: the energy that's going into the atom, and the electron's
Speaker 1: natural state is to be closer to the nucleus. But
Speaker 1: in order to move back to where it's supposed to be,
Speaker 1: it first has to give off that excess energy, which
Speaker 1: it does so by emitting the energy in the form
Speaker 1: of photons or light, and they do it in very
Speaker 1: specific frequencies. So with different semiconductors you can produce different
Speaker 1: colors of light. One nice thing about LEDs is that
Speaker 1: when an LED light fails, which typically takes a long time,
Speaker 1: LED lights tend to last much longer than incandescent lights. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the failed LED can still serve as a pathway for
Speaker 1: electricity to flow through, so the other lights on the
Speaker 1: string will continue to stay lit. It's more or less
Speaker 1: that the LED is in itself acting like a shunt.
Speaker 1: LED lights, just like other Christmas lights, tend to be
Speaker 1: wired in series, and you have multiple series of lights
Speaker 1: wired in parallel on a single string. And another great
Speaker 1: thing about LED lights is that they typically require way
Speaker 1: less energy to run, so you can run them longer
Speaker 1: and for less money in the long run than you
Speaker 1: can with classic incandescent bulbs. They tend to be more
Speaker 1: expensive than incandescent bulb lights are on an initial purchase,
Speaker 1: but in the long run you actually save money by
Speaker 1: using those and you save a lot of energy. So
Speaker 1: highly recommend it. And one type of bulb I didn't mention.
Speaker 1: I skipped over it, but this was a favorite of
Speaker 1: mine when I was growing up are bubble lights, which
Speaker 1: made a comeback not too long ago, but these were
Speaker 1: like common when I was a kid. These lights have
Speaker 1: a fluid with a relatively low boiling point, and it's
Speaker 1: inside of a glass tube and at the base of
Speaker 1: the tube is an incandescent bulb, so when the bulb
Speaker 1: lights up, it gives off heat. Then eventually that heat
Speaker 1: reaches the temperature sufficient to bring the liquid inside the
Speaker 1: tube to a boil, which produces bubbles inside the tube. Now,
Speaker 1: we had these on our Christmas trees when I was
Speaker 1: a kid, and I thought they were super awesome. The
Speaker 1: early versions of these lights used a very lightweight oil
Speaker 1: as the liquid, but more modern versions tend to rely
Speaker 1: upon dichloramethane, which has a boiling point of thirty nine
Speaker 1: point six degrees celsius or one hundred three point three
Speaker 1: degrees fahrenheit. Oh And on the other end of the
Speaker 1: spectrum are the projector systems being used to create all
Speaker 1: sorts of effects on house exteriors, like snowfall or I
Speaker 1: don't know, an ELF strike team descending on a house.
Speaker 1: These projectors typically use LEDs to generate lasers to create
Speaker 1: the light needed for the projection. The light passes through
Speaker 1: lenses that magnify whatever images are being displayed and then
Speaker 1: shoots them up so that they appear on the side
Speaker 1: of a house. And lasers are pretty nifty. They're also
Speaker 1: super technical, and I've talked about them in other episodes,
Speaker 1: so I won't go into detail here, but I want
Speaker 1: to mention them because it's another high tech gadget being
Speaker 1: used in holiday decorations these days. Also, if you have
Speaker 1: one of these things, make sure that it's pointed well
Speaker 1: at your house and not the sky, because lasers have
Speaker 1: been known to cause problems for pilots because that light
Speaker 1: can be seriously powerful, So you know, just be responsible. Now,
Speaker 1: there are other lights I could mention. There are like
Speaker 1: micro lights and mesh lights and icicle lights, but essentially
Speaker 1: all of these are variations upon the stuff I've already
Speaker 1: talked about in this episode. And then there are the
Speaker 1: Christmas light displays that synchronize the lights with a soundtrack
Speaker 1: using various micro controllers and sequencers. And maybe I'll do
Speaker 1: a full episode about that kind of stuff in the future,
Speaker 1: but for now, I say it's time for lights out.
Speaker 1: So that wraps up this episode of tech Stuff. If
Speaker 1: you guys have any suggestions for future episodes, reach out
Speaker 1: to me. You can send me an email the addresses
Speaker 1: text stuff at houstuffworks dot com or draw me a
Speaker 1: line on Facebook or Twitter. The handle for both of
Speaker 1: those is text stuff HSW. You can also visit our
Speaker 1: website that's tech stuff podcast dot com, where you'll find
Speaker 1: an archive of how many episodes? Sorry, oh all of them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all of the episodes is what Tari is saying. So
Speaker 1: you can find all the episodes at techstuffpodcast dot com.
Speaker 1: You'll also find a link to our online store where
Speaker 1: you can buy merchandise. And if you do, it's like
Speaker 1: you're giving me a little Christmas present, because every purchase
Speaker 1: you make goes to help the show, and we greatly
Speaker 1: appreciate it, and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff is a production of iHeartRadio's House Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.