WEBVTT - Lighting Up the Holidays 0:00:04.240 --> 0:00:07.240 Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios 0:00:07.320 --> 0:00:13.800 How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. 0:00:13.840 --> 0:00:17.239 I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with 0:00:17.280 --> 0:00:20.560 iHeart Radio and I love all things tech, And you know, guys, 0:00:20.560 --> 0:00:22.800 I was trying to come up with a good idea 0:00:22.880 --> 0:00:25.960 for a holiday themed show. In the past, I've done 0:00:26.000 --> 0:00:29.520 episodes about some of the big tech items that landed 0:00:29.560 --> 0:00:32.000 on holiday wish lists in the past, you know, like 0:00:32.040 --> 0:00:35.000 the greatest tech gifts of all time. But I felt 0:00:35.040 --> 0:00:37.519 like I've been there, I've done that, And besides, a 0:00:37.600 --> 0:00:40.960 lot of those topics are like super timely and aren't 0:00:41.000 --> 0:00:43.880 relevant from year to year, so it makes no sense 0:00:43.880 --> 0:00:46.720 to ever listen to them after the year they published. 0:00:46.720 --> 0:00:49.199 So instead of doing an episode that's going to be 0:00:49.240 --> 0:00:52.400 irrelevant next year, I thought I would talk about Christmas 0:00:52.520 --> 0:00:55.080 lights and how they work and why it was such 0:00:55.160 --> 0:00:58.040 a pain in the neck to rig up special Christmas 0:00:58.120 --> 0:01:01.640 lights for the Netflix series Stranger Things, which I've talked 0:01:01.640 --> 0:01:04.200 about in a previous episode, but I figured it would 0:01:04.200 --> 0:01:07.000 be a good point to return to in this one. Now, 0:01:07.240 --> 0:01:10.160 before I dive into all of that, I want to 0:01:10.200 --> 0:01:13.399 acknowledge a few things First, while I'll be talking about 0:01:13.520 --> 0:01:19.040 Christmas lights, there are many people of different faiths, ethnicities, regions, 0:01:19.080 --> 0:01:22.800 etcetera who celebrates special days during the winter months, and 0:01:22.959 --> 0:01:27.600 lights nearly always play an important part in those various observations, 0:01:27.880 --> 0:01:30.600 which makes total sense because the days are shorter in 0:01:30.640 --> 0:01:33.080 the winter and thus we have more hours of darkness 0:01:33.120 --> 0:01:36.559 for every twenty four hour period, so lights would clearly 0:01:36.600 --> 0:01:39.119 be an important part of any celebration during that part 0:01:39.160 --> 0:01:42.399 of the year. So, for example, the manora in the 0:01:42.480 --> 0:01:46.959 Jewish faith symbolizes how the Maccabees, when rededicating the Holy Temple, 0:01:47.040 --> 0:01:49.760 which they had just won back from the Greeks, used 0:01:49.800 --> 0:01:52.880 a single bottle of oil to light the manora used 0:01:52.880 --> 0:01:56.680 in the rededication ceremony for eight nights, even though the 0:01:56.680 --> 0:02:00.640 bottle should only have lasted a single night. Then there's 0:02:00.680 --> 0:02:04.040 also the celebration of Quanza, where families like candles in 0:02:04.120 --> 0:02:07.400 the cannara and the candles represent the seven principles of 0:02:07.440 --> 0:02:12.560 the holiday. But getting back to Christmas lights, there's actually 0:02:12.600 --> 0:02:16.280 an older tradition than the sort of Christmas tree lights, 0:02:16.480 --> 0:02:20.360 in which Christian families would set out candles within view 0:02:20.480 --> 0:02:23.560 of a window as a symbol to alert fellow Christians 0:02:23.560 --> 0:02:26.520 that the family inside the house was they were made 0:02:26.560 --> 0:02:29.840 up of observing Christians, and that fellow Christians would be 0:02:29.880 --> 0:02:33.560 welcome to come into that house to worship with the family. 0:02:33.960 --> 0:02:36.560 But the Christmas lights we see every year really have 0:02:36.680 --> 0:02:40.760 their roots pun intended in a Germanic tradition of the 0:02:40.840 --> 0:02:45.280 Christmas tree. So why would you ever cut down a 0:02:45.320 --> 0:02:48.800 tree and bring it inside in the first place. Well, again, 0:02:49.520 --> 0:02:51.200 one of those things that makes sense as you start 0:02:51.240 --> 0:02:54.240 to think about all the details. Plants like fur trees 0:02:54.520 --> 0:02:58.520 and holly remain green even in the winter, which otherwise 0:02:58.560 --> 0:03:01.560 pretty much wipes out everything else and makes it brown 0:03:01.680 --> 0:03:04.520 and dead, so or appearing to be dead. So these 0:03:04.560 --> 0:03:09.160 plants became symbols of resilience and everlasting life. So people 0:03:09.200 --> 0:03:11.360 would cut down some of those plants and bring them 0:03:11.400 --> 0:03:15.200 indoors to remind them of that. But you know, then 0:03:15.200 --> 0:03:18.280 the plants would eventually just dry out and turn brown 0:03:18.840 --> 0:03:22.320 and thus negate the whole reason for bringing them inside. 0:03:22.320 --> 0:03:26.000 But you know, humans have never been rational creatures. There 0:03:26.040 --> 0:03:30.480 are some unsupported legends surrounding the origins of the German 0:03:30.560 --> 0:03:34.840 Christmas tree UH, sometimes referred to as the Tannenbaum, but 0:03:34.960 --> 0:03:38.120 really Tannenbaum is more of a word for fur trees 0:03:38.160 --> 0:03:41.120 in general, not just those all decked out with bowls 0:03:41.120 --> 0:03:44.240 of holly and whatnot. But one legend has it that 0:03:45.160 --> 0:03:48.640 Martin Luther, the reformer who caused a bit of a 0:03:48.720 --> 0:03:51.720 ruckus in the fifteen hundreds when he, you know, decided 0:03:51.720 --> 0:03:54.680 to criticize the Catholic Church, that he had started the 0:03:54.680 --> 0:03:58.360 tradition of the Christmas tree. However, the earliest written accounts 0:03:58.400 --> 0:04:02.960 on record that mentioned this tradition date to six oh five. 0:04:03.360 --> 0:04:06.240 Now that doesn't mean that's when the tradition started, of course, 0:04:06.360 --> 0:04:09.160 it's just the earliest written account that we happen to have. 0:04:10.080 --> 0:04:12.600 Scholars think the tradition might date back at least to 0:04:12.680 --> 0:04:15.280 the mid sixteenth century, though that would still be after 0:04:15.320 --> 0:04:19.520 Martin Luther had died. So anyway, that sixteen o five account, 0:04:19.600 --> 0:04:24.760 all it says is that the people would set up 0:04:24.839 --> 0:04:29.080 Christmas trees in their rooms in Strasbourg. There's no mention 0:04:29.080 --> 0:04:33.840 of lights in this particular account, but the decorations consisted 0:04:33.839 --> 0:04:37.400 of things like roses made out of paper and various 0:04:37.440 --> 0:04:42.240 foods being shoved into the tree, things like apples or cookies, 0:04:42.320 --> 0:04:45.720 and sugar. It's very food centricum. In fact, there was 0:04:45.760 --> 0:04:48.480 a tradition of raiding the Christmas tree on one of 0:04:48.520 --> 0:04:50.159 the days of Christmas, where the kids get to go 0:04:50.240 --> 0:04:53.520 and actually grab treats from the tree and eat them. 0:04:53.640 --> 0:04:57.520 The first written account to bring up the detail about 0:04:57.760 --> 0:05:02.159 lights in the Christmas tree dates to sixteen sixty. People 0:05:02.160 --> 0:05:05.919 in Germany would pin or otherwise attached candles to branches 0:05:06.040 --> 0:05:09.400 of these trees, and again, frequently these are trees that 0:05:09.440 --> 0:05:11.640 have been cut down and put up inside a house, 0:05:11.720 --> 0:05:15.679 not just trees out in the woods somewhere. Generally speaking, 0:05:15.920 --> 0:05:18.320 the practice was to light the candles only for a 0:05:18.440 --> 0:05:21.760 very short time before you blew them out again. And 0:05:21.839 --> 0:05:24.520 you were never supposed to leave a tree unattended, because, 0:05:24.560 --> 0:05:28.040 as you can imagine, combining a cut tree that might 0:05:28.080 --> 0:05:32.200 be kind of dry with open flames is a recipe 0:05:32.279 --> 0:05:35.000 for disaster. And in fact, there were more than a 0:05:35.000 --> 0:05:37.840 few cases of fires with these trees, some of them 0:05:37.960 --> 0:05:41.320 ending in catastrophe and tragedy. But I'm sure the effect 0:05:41.400 --> 0:05:43.520 was really nice leading right up to the moment where 0:05:43.520 --> 0:05:46.880 everything went ablaze. Okay, so let's skip ahead to the 0:05:46.880 --> 0:05:50.720 eighteen hundreds. At that point, the tradition extended beyond Germany. 0:05:51.240 --> 0:05:56.760 UH Harvard professor named Charles Fallen, inspired by stories that 0:05:56.800 --> 0:05:59.560 he had heard in Europe, did a lit up Christmas 0:05:59.600 --> 0:06:02.880 tree in America. This was believed to be the first 0:06:02.960 --> 0:06:05.120 lit Christmas tree in America, or at least the first 0:06:05.120 --> 0:06:08.920 one on record. In the eighteen forties, in England, Queen 0:06:09.000 --> 0:06:12.640 Victoria and Prince Albert had a Christmas tree famously depicted 0:06:12.680 --> 0:06:15.599 in an illustration that was published in a newspaper that 0:06:15.720 --> 0:06:19.719 likely helped boost the practice over in England. Prince Albert 0:06:19.800 --> 0:06:24.240 brought this over from his homeland in Saxony. So people 0:06:24.320 --> 0:06:27.480 came up with new ways to attach the candles to trees, 0:06:27.640 --> 0:06:30.760 you know, they found more improved methods that would catch 0:06:30.800 --> 0:06:33.440 the wax and things like that. However, there was still 0:06:33.640 --> 0:06:38.479 very much a danger of fire with this particular approach. Then, 0:06:38.560 --> 0:06:41.560 in the later eighteen hundreds we get to Thomas Edison, 0:06:41.920 --> 0:06:44.920 the inventor and entrepreneur who was spending a lot of 0:06:44.960 --> 0:06:48.080 time and resources trying to perfect the light bulb. Which 0:06:48.279 --> 0:06:51.479 he did not invent the light bulb, but he did 0:06:51.520 --> 0:06:54.239 improve upon it, or rather, I should say his lab 0:06:54.440 --> 0:06:57.760 improved upon it. So when he and his engineers managed 0:06:57.800 --> 0:06:59.720 to make a light bulb that could last more than 0:06:59.760 --> 0:07:02.719 just a few hours and could be suitable for general use, 0:07:02.800 --> 0:07:06.599 as opposed to stuff like the more dangerous arc lamps that, 0:07:06.839 --> 0:07:11.760 while extremely bright, were not practical for everyday applications. He 0:07:11.800 --> 0:07:13.240 then had to figure out a way, how do I 0:07:13.440 --> 0:07:18.160 sell this idea to cities, right to city officials, and 0:07:18.280 --> 0:07:21.200 then further onto the general public. So he wanted to 0:07:21.200 --> 0:07:24.800 convince Manhattan officials that his company should be the one 0:07:24.840 --> 0:07:28.960 to provide electricity and light all of Manhattan. So he 0:07:29.040 --> 0:07:31.960 had his employees hang lights during the holiday season in 0:07:32.080 --> 0:07:35.600 eighteen eighty on the outside of Menlo Park, which was 0:07:35.640 --> 0:07:38.400 an easy view of trains passing by, and it got 0:07:38.400 --> 0:07:41.120 a lot of attention. Now, one of the inventors who 0:07:41.160 --> 0:07:45.960 was working at his Menlo Park facility was Edward Hibbert Johnson. 0:07:46.320 --> 0:07:49.520 Johnson had actually been responsible for giving Edison a job 0:07:49.600 --> 0:07:53.760 at the Automatic Telegraph Company, but later on Johnson would 0:07:53.840 --> 0:07:57.120 end up working closely with Edison to develop Menlo Park 0:07:57.160 --> 0:08:00.520 itself and became an inventor and executive at the Edison 0:08:00.640 --> 0:08:03.640 Light Company. So it's funny because he helped get Edison 0:08:03.680 --> 0:08:06.480 a job early, and then he ended up working for Edison. 0:08:06.560 --> 0:08:11.040 Later it was at the Menlo Park facility where Johnson 0:08:11.080 --> 0:08:14.280 developed string lights, and these were lights that were wired 0:08:14.320 --> 0:08:17.560 together in series and would serve as the basis for 0:08:17.680 --> 0:08:21.080 Christmas lights. Just moving forward from that point, he used 0:08:21.080 --> 0:08:24.080 those lights to decorate a Christmas tree, and so Johnson 0:08:24.160 --> 0:08:27.240 is sometimes referred to as the father of electric Christmas 0:08:27.240 --> 0:08:30.360 tree lights because the original version, the earlier version that 0:08:30.480 --> 0:08:32.720 Edison did that was a string of lights they hung 0:08:32.840 --> 0:08:35.920 up on a building. This was the first time where 0:08:36.000 --> 0:08:40.079 someone was using electric Christmas lights to replace the candles 0:08:40.440 --> 0:08:43.839 that were found on the Germanic Christmas trees. His lights, 0:08:43.880 --> 0:08:46.600 by the way, had bulbs that were red, white, and blue. 0:08:46.760 --> 0:08:50.840 Is quite the patriotic Christmas tree. And like Edison, Johnson 0:08:50.840 --> 0:08:52.920 intended that for this not just to be a festive 0:08:53.000 --> 0:08:56.320 display in the spirit of America and the holiday season, 0:08:56.920 --> 0:08:59.600 but also a marketing effort to get more people to 0:09:00.120 --> 0:09:04.760 support and want and adopt electric lights. There was a 0:09:04.800 --> 0:09:09.240 general distrust in electricity around this time, so these were 0:09:09.280 --> 0:09:11.880 the ways in which Edison and his associates could try 0:09:11.920 --> 0:09:15.640 to win people over to this new technology, and adoption 0:09:15.679 --> 0:09:18.040 did not take off right away. So for one thing, 0:09:18.679 --> 0:09:22.000 no New York based reporters wrote about this Christmas tree 0:09:22.080 --> 0:09:25.800 at all, but one reporter for a Detroit newspaper did 0:09:25.880 --> 0:09:28.920 publish an account of what it was like seeing the 0:09:29.000 --> 0:09:32.160 Christmas tree all lit up. The next big development in 0:09:32.200 --> 0:09:36.360 the adoption of Christmas lights would come in eight when 0:09:36.480 --> 0:09:40.240 US President Grover Cleveland incorporated them in decorations for the 0:09:40.280 --> 0:09:43.360 Christmas Tree at the White House. So we're gonna go 0:09:43.400 --> 0:09:46.160 off on a little tangent here some fun trivia facts 0:09:46.280 --> 0:09:50.920 about Grover Cleveland. So he's the only US president whoever 0:09:50.960 --> 0:09:55.480 served two non consecutive terms, meaning he was both our 0:09:55.520 --> 0:09:59.559 twenty second and our twenty fourth president of the United States. 0:10:00.080 --> 0:10:02.000 The lighting of the Christmas tree would be during his 0:10:02.200 --> 0:10:05.800 second term as president. And just in case you're wondering 0:10:05.920 --> 0:10:09.480 the twenty third president, the one who interrupted those two 0:10:09.600 --> 0:10:14.160 terms was Benjamin Harrison, the grandson of our ninth President, 0:10:14.480 --> 0:10:18.599 William Henry Harrison. Sorry, recently, I've been showing up on 0:10:18.640 --> 0:10:21.480 a lot of ridiculous history episodes, and sometimes that stuff 0:10:21.520 --> 0:10:27.280 just gonna sticks with you anyway. Cleveland's Tree. Grover Cleveland's 0:10:27.320 --> 0:10:31.160 tree featured one hundred lights with bulbs of various colors, 0:10:31.160 --> 0:10:33.520 and it must have been a really impressive site for 0:10:33.559 --> 0:10:36.640 the time. Some of the movers and shakers in America, 0:10:36.920 --> 0:10:40.240 in other words, people had a ton of cash to burn. 0:10:40.480 --> 0:10:43.199 They began to put up their own decorated and lit 0:10:43.320 --> 0:10:46.160 Christmas trees. But it was not something the average person 0:10:46.200 --> 0:10:48.800 could do because at that time most of the United 0:10:48.840 --> 0:10:52.720 States wasn't wired for electricity, so to even have a 0:10:52.840 --> 0:10:55.480 lit Christmas tree with electric lights, you would have to 0:10:55.520 --> 0:10:58.960 set up a generator. You'd also typically have to hire 0:10:58.960 --> 0:11:03.000 an electrician to actually wire it up, and in today's money, 0:11:03.080 --> 0:11:05.760 that would mean that decorating a tree could cost at 0:11:05.840 --> 0:11:09.400 least a couple of thousands of dollars, so only the 0:11:09.400 --> 0:11:12.199 hoity toity folks who wanted to show off their wealth 0:11:12.200 --> 0:11:14.520 could really afford to have a Christmas tree with electric 0:11:14.600 --> 0:11:17.760 lights at that time. Anyway, over the course of the 0:11:17.800 --> 0:11:21.679 early nineteen hundreds, electric lights began to gain popularity as 0:11:21.679 --> 0:11:25.120 people became more comfortable with the idea of electricity. And 0:11:25.160 --> 0:11:27.920 it's really no wonder that folks were nervous at first. 0:11:28.280 --> 0:11:31.640 Fire is something you can see, at least in most cases, 0:11:31.960 --> 0:11:35.960 but electricity could be deadly but was also invisible, and 0:11:36.080 --> 0:11:39.760 Edison's company had already engaged in some pretty heavy smear 0:11:39.800 --> 0:11:44.400 campaigns against alternating current, since Edison was pushing direct current 0:11:44.440 --> 0:11:47.520 as a means to distribute electricity regionally, and a lot 0:11:47.559 --> 0:11:51.199 of those events and demonstrations that his company held involves 0:11:51.200 --> 0:11:54.880 showing off how deadly electricity could be, so they were 0:11:54.960 --> 0:11:57.960 kind of feeding into that fear. But the allure of 0:11:57.960 --> 0:12:01.199 the lights was undeniable. And with that, I mean not 0:12:01.280 --> 0:12:03.480 just Christmas lights, I mean you're run of the mill 0:12:03.600 --> 0:12:07.200 light bulbs now. Even in nineteen o three when General 0:12:07.240 --> 0:12:11.439 Electric introduced string Christmas light kits, which will let people 0:12:11.440 --> 0:12:14.160 string up their own lights at home without necessarily the 0:12:14.280 --> 0:12:17.640 use of an electrician, it was still really expensive a 0:12:17.760 --> 0:12:21.000 string of lights, and General Electric actually referred to these 0:12:21.000 --> 0:12:25.240 strings as festoons anyway. The string of lights consisted of 0:12:25.360 --> 0:12:28.840 eight whole light bulb sockets and they would hold Edison 0:12:28.920 --> 0:12:32.240 light bulbs, and it cost the equivalent of about three 0:12:32.360 --> 0:12:36.240 hundred dollars today. That's just the lights, and this was 0:12:36.280 --> 0:12:39.240 not something that the average family would necessarily spring for. Also, 0:12:39.320 --> 0:12:41.920 you wouldn't buy these kits, you would rent them for 0:12:41.960 --> 0:12:44.920 three hundred dollars, So after the rental period you would 0:12:44.920 --> 0:12:48.200 actually have to return them, so yikes. Now, the bulbs 0:12:48.200 --> 0:12:51.360 on these things were small, round bulbs, almost like manature 0:12:51.440 --> 0:12:55.760 incandescent light bulbs. Actually that's exactly what they were, but 0:12:55.960 --> 0:12:58.200 I'm talking more about the form factor rather than the 0:12:58.240 --> 0:13:03.280 actual lighting mechanism. In nineteen nineteen, General Electric introduced a 0:13:03.320 --> 0:13:06.120 new bulb shape and filament. It was more of a 0:13:06.160 --> 0:13:10.200 flame shape, is that sort of classic, large, kind of clunky, 0:13:10.280 --> 0:13:13.080 retro looking light bulb. That was the general shape that 0:13:13.160 --> 0:13:15.760 they introduced, and it had a filament made out of 0:13:16.160 --> 0:13:20.000 Mazda toungusten. The filament is the part of the incandescent 0:13:20.040 --> 0:13:23.360 bulb that actually glows. The company would use Mazda filaments 0:13:23.360 --> 0:13:26.800 in all sorts of lamp bulbs, not just Christmas ones. Now, 0:13:26.800 --> 0:13:30.040 there were a couple of possibly apocryphal stories about some 0:13:30.120 --> 0:13:33.520 smaller companies around this time that played an important role 0:13:33.559 --> 0:13:37.480 in popularizing Christmas lights. One of those stories is about 0:13:37.520 --> 0:13:41.600 a telephone company employee named Ralph E. Morris who at 0:13:41.679 --> 0:13:44.920 some point. Different versions of this story can date it 0:13:44.960 --> 0:13:48.800 to either eight, the same year that Grover Cleveland was 0:13:48.880 --> 0:13:51.760 lighting up the White House, or nineteen o eight. There's 0:13:51.760 --> 0:13:54.720 a pretty big discrepancy, but the stories say that he 0:13:54.800 --> 0:13:58.000 looked at a telephone switchboard, and telephone switchboards had these 0:13:58.000 --> 0:14:00.760 little tiny light bulbs mounted in them that would light 0:14:00.840 --> 0:14:03.480 up when you were making connections, and he thought those 0:14:03.520 --> 0:14:06.920 little light bulbs might make nice Christmas decorations. So he 0:14:06.960 --> 0:14:09.320 took a bunch of those little lightbulbs, a bunch of 0:14:09.360 --> 0:14:13.600 telephone wire, wired them all together, electrified the wire, and 0:14:13.840 --> 0:14:17.600 made up a little lit Christmas tree, a little fake 0:14:17.960 --> 0:14:21.120 lit Christmas tree, because the story says that he made 0:14:21.360 --> 0:14:24.880 a makeshift Christmas tree out of feathers. I don't know 0:14:24.960 --> 0:14:27.920 exactly how he did it, but that's what the story says. 0:14:27.960 --> 0:14:30.400 His son would later write an article claiming that his 0:14:30.480 --> 0:14:36.280 father invented Christmas lights, which wasn't quite accurate. They predated this, 0:14:36.400 --> 0:14:38.680 but I'm pretty sure it was an honest mistake, not 0:14:38.840 --> 0:14:44.480 something that was done, you know, maliciously. Now. The other, 0:14:44.520 --> 0:14:48.480 possibly an apocryphal story involves a guy named Albert Sadaka. 0:14:49.400 --> 0:14:52.280 This story goes that when Sedaka was fifteen, he heard 0:14:52.320 --> 0:14:56.040 about a terrible tragedy involving a deadly fire that began 0:14:56.080 --> 0:14:59.400 when a Christmas tree lit with candles caught fire and 0:14:59.800 --> 0:15:03.520 be died. As a result. His family made novelty lights 0:15:03.920 --> 0:15:06.840 with white bulbs, So he thought, hey, how about we 0:15:07.040 --> 0:15:11.080 change out those regular bulbs with bulbs of different colors 0:15:11.200 --> 0:15:13.600 and we use electric lights instead of candles to light 0:15:13.680 --> 0:15:16.560 up a Christmas tree. According to this story, he and 0:15:16.600 --> 0:15:18.720 his brothers began to do just that, and a few 0:15:18.760 --> 0:15:21.440 years later they led an effort to bring together several 0:15:21.480 --> 0:15:25.120 small competing light companies. They're all going for the same customers, 0:15:25.280 --> 0:15:29.120 and they formed the National Outfit Manufacturers Association, or NOMA, 0:15:29.440 --> 0:15:32.680 which would become its own company and by became the 0:15:32.760 --> 0:15:37.000 leading manufacturing company for electric Christmas lights. Now, as power 0:15:37.160 --> 0:15:40.520 companies wired up the United States for electricity, the popularity 0:15:40.560 --> 0:15:43.880 of electric Christmas lights began to grow. In nineteen twenty, 0:15:43.960 --> 0:15:47.440 a hardware store owner in California named Frederick Nash decorated 0:15:47.480 --> 0:15:50.760 trees outside his establishment, and that quickly grew into a 0:15:50.800 --> 0:15:53.560 tradition in which a nine block stretch of the road 0:15:53.760 --> 0:15:56.640 in front of his business would end up having trees 0:15:56.680 --> 0:15:59.160 just draped in lights, and it became the first big 0:15:59.200 --> 0:16:04.120 documented door Christmas lights display. When we come back, i'll 0:16:04.200 --> 0:16:06.600 talk more about the evolution of Christmas lights, and then 0:16:06.600 --> 0:16:10.480 we'll dive into how the heck they work, and in 0:16:10.520 --> 0:16:13.720 the case of traditional Christmas lights, how they don't work 0:16:13.800 --> 0:16:16.640 if just one bulb goes bad. But let's take a 0:16:16.720 --> 0:16:25.920 quick break. I've got a little bit more to go 0:16:26.000 --> 0:16:28.880 on to the history of Christmas lights and some of 0:16:28.920 --> 0:16:31.240 the interesting things about them before we get into how 0:16:31.280 --> 0:16:35.160 they work. So by the late nineteen thirties, electric Christmas 0:16:35.280 --> 0:16:39.240 lights had become a popular new tradition, with homeowners and 0:16:39.360 --> 0:16:44.240 businesses alike uh using them to create bright, colorful displays, 0:16:44.320 --> 0:16:47.720 and in some cases they went a little bit overboard. 0:16:47.960 --> 0:16:51.280 A few places became truly famous for their decorated trees 0:16:51.320 --> 0:16:54.360 and buildings. When the United States entered into World War 0:16:54.400 --> 0:16:56.600 Two and there was a concern about the possibility of 0:16:56.600 --> 0:17:00.360 cities being bombed, there were blackout orders in various cities 0:17:00.400 --> 0:17:02.960 like New York, and that meant that Christmas lights would 0:17:03.000 --> 0:17:06.240 actually go dark in nineteen four in New York City. 0:17:06.280 --> 0:17:08.760 But with the war's end the following year, people made 0:17:08.800 --> 0:17:13.160 up for lost time. Meanwhile, tastes began to change in America. 0:17:13.560 --> 0:17:16.679 Families in the late nineteen fifties were introduced to a 0:17:16.760 --> 0:17:22.000 new invention, the aluminium Christmas tree. Yeah, I can't even 0:17:22.119 --> 0:17:25.440 I can't believe this this really happened either, guys. These 0:17:25.440 --> 0:17:29.240 were trees made out of aluminium, a space age material 0:17:29.320 --> 0:17:32.480 that was clearly so much better than a freshly cut 0:17:32.520 --> 0:17:36.240 fir tree. However, the Christmas lights of the day, which 0:17:36.280 --> 0:17:42.080 were still incandescent bulbs in sometimes questionable wires, would get 0:17:42.160 --> 0:17:45.600 way too hot for aluminium trees. They also could potentially 0:17:46.119 --> 0:17:51.560 create an electric shock hazard because aluminium can conduct electricity. Plus, 0:17:51.560 --> 0:17:55.320 those aluminum trees had needles quote unquote made out of foil, 0:17:55.400 --> 0:17:59.159 which would easily melt. So instead of hanging electric lights 0:17:59.160 --> 0:18:02.960 on the tree, companies began to manufacture lamps that had 0:18:03.000 --> 0:18:07.119 a rotating color wheel. And it's just what it sounds like, 0:18:07.359 --> 0:18:09.960 and it's not all that different from what was inside 0:18:10.040 --> 0:18:14.240 old mechanical television sets before electric TV was invented. So 0:18:14.320 --> 0:18:17.480 you've got a bulb that's what provides the light, kind 0:18:17.480 --> 0:18:19.600 of like a projector, and in front of the bulb, 0:18:19.920 --> 0:18:23.680 you have a wheel that has different pains of colored plastic, 0:18:24.160 --> 0:18:28.199 and this wheel rotates past the bulb and different colors 0:18:28.240 --> 0:18:32.440 of light shine out of your glorious lamp towards your 0:18:32.640 --> 0:18:38.320 even more glorious aluminum Christmas tree. It was a thing y'all. Now, 0:18:38.320 --> 0:18:41.879 I can't say I personally found it appealing, but back 0:18:41.920 --> 0:18:46.800 then it was selling like gangbusters. Unfortunately, for companies like Noma, 0:18:46.880 --> 0:18:50.280 the leading manufacturer of Christmas lights, it meant that there 0:18:50.320 --> 0:18:53.800 was a drastic drop in Christmas lights sales as these 0:18:53.840 --> 0:18:57.239 aluminum trees became all the rage. Noma would actually end 0:18:57.320 --> 0:19:00.240 up going into bankruptcy and today it exists as a 0:19:00.280 --> 0:19:03.480 brand name. But that's about it. The era of the 0:19:03.520 --> 0:19:07.400 aluminum tree lasted about a decade, upon which time many 0:19:07.440 --> 0:19:11.240 people either went back to using the previously live trees 0:19:11.880 --> 0:19:15.719 or they switched to more natural looking artificial trees, and 0:19:15.760 --> 0:19:19.840 that meant the electric lights were back baby. However, because 0:19:20.000 --> 0:19:23.879 of the American manufacturers going out of business during the 0:19:24.000 --> 0:19:27.639 rain of aluminum terror, the Christmas lights on the market 0:19:27.760 --> 0:19:30.879 mostly came from other countries, so America would no longer 0:19:30.920 --> 0:19:34.280 be king of the electric Christmas light. All right. Now, 0:19:34.280 --> 0:19:37.199 we're getting up to about nineteen seventy and the introduction 0:19:37.320 --> 0:19:40.320 of the mini light. So for a very long time, 0:19:40.480 --> 0:19:44.080 the typical Christmas light was a five or ten watt bulb, 0:19:44.680 --> 0:19:47.479 typically the size of a night light bulb, those little 0:19:47.800 --> 0:19:50.760 kind of cone shaped bulbs that I was talking about 0:19:50.800 --> 0:19:53.639 the retro style. They're pretty big. Uh. These were the 0:19:53.680 --> 0:19:55.479 type of lights that I grew up with when I 0:19:55.520 --> 0:19:57.480 was a kid. That's the kind we had on our trees, 0:19:57.560 --> 0:20:01.960 the big, big bright lights. I still missed those. But 0:20:02.000 --> 0:20:04.399 they drew a lot of power because a string of 0:20:04.520 --> 0:20:08.200 fifty five what bulbs means that you're consuming two fifty 0:20:08.280 --> 0:20:12.400 what's and most people were using multiple strands, like one 0:20:12.440 --> 0:20:15.000 string wouldn't do it. You might have three strands, three 0:20:15.000 --> 0:20:17.679 to five for a tree, maybe five to ten for 0:20:17.760 --> 0:20:20.640 your house. So you're consuming an enormous amount of power 0:20:20.680 --> 0:20:23.399 when you're having this stuff lit up. So the Christmas 0:20:23.520 --> 0:20:27.080 lights were greedy for electricity. Then they pushed electric bills 0:20:27.520 --> 0:20:31.040 pretty high. They would also get really hot, which you 0:20:31.040 --> 0:20:33.720 know I mentioned back with the aluminium trees. Touching a 0:20:33.760 --> 0:20:36.399 bulb could give you a little bit of a minor burn, 0:20:36.720 --> 0:20:39.080 as I found out on more than one occasion when 0:20:39.119 --> 0:20:42.320 I was a kid, because I had three qualities that 0:20:42.480 --> 0:20:47.080 guaranteed I was gonna get burned. First, I was curious. Second, 0:20:47.640 --> 0:20:51.399 I was foolish or maybe stupid, and third I had 0:20:51.440 --> 0:20:55.400 a really short memory, I guess. Anyway, the bulbs were popular, 0:20:55.640 --> 0:20:59.120 and they were colorful, but they were also wasteful and expensive. 0:20:59.760 --> 0:21:04.560 The many light would become a popular alternative to that bulky, hot, 0:21:04.560 --> 0:21:08.119 expensive Christmas light of the past. The many lights are, 0:21:08.160 --> 0:21:12.119 as the name implies, smaller. They only need two point 0:21:12.200 --> 0:21:16.120 five volts of electricity, and they don't get nearly as hot. 0:21:16.160 --> 0:21:18.800 Although they are still incandescent bulbs, so they still do 0:21:19.000 --> 0:21:21.679 generate heat, they're just not as hot as those larger 0:21:21.680 --> 0:21:25.239 bulbs were. It does, however, raise a question, how do 0:21:25.280 --> 0:21:28.800 you supply electricity to a two and a half volt 0:21:28.920 --> 0:21:33.040 socket if your source is an outlet that's putting out 0:21:33.080 --> 0:21:35.879 a hundred twenty volts. This is a good time to 0:21:35.920 --> 0:21:40.360 transition into a talk about circuits. So a quick reminder 0:21:40.880 --> 0:21:45.040 in electricity, voltage is sort of like water pressure in 0:21:45.080 --> 0:21:48.640 a water system. It's how hard the electricity is being 0:21:48.680 --> 0:21:50.720 pushed through. You can think of it like that. It's 0:21:50.720 --> 0:21:54.480 not exactly the same, but that's a rough analogy. It's 0:21:54.480 --> 0:21:59.199 the behind the movement of electricity, and a volts supply 0:22:00.000 --> 0:22:03.320 are overshadows a two and a half volt load. So 0:22:03.440 --> 0:22:07.360 imagine like having a fire hose of water directed at you. 0:22:07.359 --> 0:22:09.600 You've got a little shot glass that you're filling up 0:22:09.600 --> 0:22:11.400 and dumping out. It would just be way too much. 0:22:12.119 --> 0:22:16.280 But these Christmas lights were chained together in series, which 0:22:16.320 --> 0:22:20.560 meant one bulb socket connects to the next bulb socket 0:22:20.760 --> 0:22:23.880 in the same circuit and so on. So if you've 0:22:23.920 --> 0:22:27.080 got two two and a half volt sockets, you end 0:22:27.160 --> 0:22:30.280 up with a load that requires five volts. If you 0:22:30.320 --> 0:22:32.439 were to multiply two and a half volts by I 0:22:32.440 --> 0:22:36.680 don't know, let's say forty eight, you'd get a hundred twenty. 0:22:36.720 --> 0:22:39.399 So yeah, if you string together forty eight light bulb 0:22:39.480 --> 0:22:41.359 sockets and each one of those is a two and 0:22:41.400 --> 0:22:44.560 a half volt socket, you end up with a full 0:22:44.600 --> 0:22:48.280 load what requires a hundred twenty volts. Problem solved now. 0:22:48.320 --> 0:22:51.400 Typically companies would actually bump that up to fifty light 0:22:51.480 --> 0:22:56.280 sockets per series, and those extra two sockets would mean 0:22:56.280 --> 0:22:59.679 that each individual bulb would be slightly, maybe even in 0:22:59.760 --> 0:23:03.359 per sceptibly dimmer than it would be if you only 0:23:03.359 --> 0:23:06.439 had forty eight, but it wouldn't be so dim that 0:23:06.520 --> 0:23:10.359 it would make a huge difference. So imagine a pathway 0:23:10.400 --> 0:23:14.159 from an electric outlet that goes down a line of wires, 0:23:14.240 --> 0:23:17.679 and those wires connect to fifty bulbs in series. So 0:23:17.760 --> 0:23:21.239 bulb one, the bulb, two, the bulb three, etcetera. This 0:23:21.359 --> 0:23:24.480 represents the path that electricity takes, and along the way, 0:23:24.720 --> 0:23:27.440 the electricity is doing work in the form of producing 0:23:27.520 --> 0:23:30.639 light with those little light bulbs. And here's where a 0:23:30.760 --> 0:23:34.199