WEBVTT - Rerun: Lighting Up the Holidays 0:00:04.440 --> 0:00:12.360 Welcome to tex Stuff production from I Heart Radio. Hey there, 0:00:12.440 --> 0:00:17.960 and happy holidays, frum tech Stuff. We are currently off 0:00:17.960 --> 0:00:21.239 work today. It is a holiday for us. My name, 0:00:21.280 --> 0:00:24.079 by the way, is Jonathan Strickland, Diamond, executive producer with 0:00:24.200 --> 0:00:27.120 I Heart Radio and how the Tech are you. We 0:00:27.160 --> 0:00:29.479 didn't want to leave you without an episode today, so 0:00:29.600 --> 0:00:33.960 today we're bringing you a rerun this episode originally published 0:00:33.960 --> 0:00:39.880 on November two thousand nineteen. It is titled Lighting Up 0:00:40.040 --> 0:00:44.479 the Holidays, and as you might guess, it's about the 0:00:44.520 --> 0:00:50.479 incorporation of electric lights in particular in holiday celebrations, and 0:00:50.520 --> 0:00:54.400 also you know, talking a little bit about Stranger Things 0:00:54.480 --> 0:00:56.920 and why it was a challenge to make the holiday 0:00:57.000 --> 0:00:59.520 lights light up in the way they do in the 0:00:59.520 --> 0:01:03.560 first season of Stranger Things. So sit back, relax, and 0:01:03.680 --> 0:01:09.040 enjoy this episode about lighting up the Holidays. Now, before 0:01:09.120 --> 0:01:12.160 I dive into all of that, I want to acknowledge 0:01:12.160 --> 0:01:15.760 a few things first. While I'll be talking about Christmas lights, 0:01:16.319 --> 0:01:21.080 there are many people of different faiths, ethnicities, regions, etcetera 0:01:21.120 --> 0:01:24.760 who celebrates special days during the winter months, and lights 0:01:25.080 --> 0:01:29.040 nearly always play an important part in those various observations, 0:01:29.319 --> 0:01:32.039 which makes total sense because the days are shorter in 0:01:32.080 --> 0:01:34.520 the winter, and thus we have more hours of darkness 0:01:34.560 --> 0:01:38.000 for every twenty four hour period, so lights would clearly 0:01:38.040 --> 0:01:40.560 be an important part of any celebration during that part 0:01:40.600 --> 0:01:43.800 of the year. So, for example, the manora in the 0:01:43.920 --> 0:01:48.400 Jewish faith symbolizes how the Maccabees, when rededicating the Holy Temple, 0:01:48.480 --> 0:01:51.200 which they had just won back from the Greeks, used 0:01:51.240 --> 0:01:54.320 a single bottle of oil to light the manora used 0:01:54.320 --> 0:01:58.120 in the rededication ceremony for eight nights, even though the 0:01:58.120 --> 0:02:02.080 bottle should only have lasted a single night. Then there's 0:02:02.120 --> 0:02:05.480 also the celebration of Kwanza, where families like candles in 0:02:05.560 --> 0:02:08.840 the cannara, and the candles represent the seven principles of 0:02:08.880 --> 0:02:14.000 the holiday. But getting back to Christmas lights, there's actually 0:02:14.040 --> 0:02:17.720 an older tradition than the sort of Christmas tree lights, 0:02:17.919 --> 0:02:21.800 in which Christian families would set out candles within view 0:02:21.919 --> 0:02:25.000 of a window as a symbol to alert fellow Christians 0:02:25.000 --> 0:02:27.960 that the family inside the house was they were made 0:02:28.000 --> 0:02:31.280 up of observing Christians, and that fellow Christians would be 0:02:31.320 --> 0:02:35.000 welcome to come into that house to worship with the family. 0:02:35.400 --> 0:02:38.000 But the Christmas lights we see every year really have 0:02:38.120 --> 0:02:42.200 their roots pun intended in a Germanic tradition of the 0:02:42.280 --> 0:02:46.720 Christmas tree. So why would you ever cut down a 0:02:46.760 --> 0:02:50.240 tree and bring it inside in the first place. Well, again, 0:02:50.960 --> 0:02:52.639 one of those things that makes sense as you start 0:02:52.680 --> 0:02:55.680 to think about all the details. Plants like fur trees 0:02:55.960 --> 0:02:59.960 and holly remain green even in the winter, which otherwise 0:03:00.040 --> 0:03:03.000 pretty much wipes out everything else and makes it brown 0:03:03.120 --> 0:03:05.959 and dead, so or appearing to be dead. So these 0:03:06.000 --> 0:03:10.600 plants became symbols of resilience and everlasting life. So people 0:03:10.639 --> 0:03:12.800 would cut down some of those plants and bring them 0:03:12.800 --> 0:03:16.639 indoors to remind them of that. But you know, then 0:03:16.639 --> 0:03:19.720 the plants would eventually just dry out and turn brown, 0:03:20.280 --> 0:03:23.760 and thus negate the whole reason for bringing them inside. 0:03:23.760 --> 0:03:27.440 But you know, humans have never been rational creatures. There 0:03:27.480 --> 0:03:31.919 are some unsupported legends surrounding the origins of the German 0:03:32.400 --> 0:03:36.280 Christmas tree uh sometimes referred to as the Tannenbaum, but 0:03:36.400 --> 0:03:39.560 really Tannenbaum is more of a word for fur trees 0:03:39.600 --> 0:03:42.520 in general, not just those all decked out with bowls 0:03:42.560 --> 0:03:45.680 of holly and whatnot. But one legend has it that 0:03:46.600 --> 0:03:50.080 Martin Luther, the Reformer, who caused a bit of a 0:03:50.160 --> 0:03:53.160 Ruckus in the fifteen hundreds, when he, you know, decided 0:03:53.160 --> 0:03:56.120 to criticize the Catholic Church that he had started the 0:03:56.120 --> 0:03:59.680 tradition of the Christmas tree. However, the earliest written accounts 0:03:59.800 --> 0:04:04.400 on record that mentioned this tradition date to six oh five. 0:04:04.800 --> 0:04:07.680 Now that doesn't mean that's when the tradition started, of course, 0:04:07.800 --> 0:04:10.600 it's just the earliest written account that we happen to have. 0:04:11.520 --> 0:04:14.040 Scholars think the tradition might date back at least to 0:04:14.120 --> 0:04:16.719 the mid sixteenth century, though that would still be after 0:04:16.760 --> 0:04:20.960 Martin Luther had died. So anyway, that sixteen o five account, 0:04:21.040 --> 0:04:26.200 all it says is that the people would set up 0:04:26.279 --> 0:04:30.520 Christmas trees in their rooms in Strasbourg. There's no mention 0:04:30.520 --> 0:04:35.280 of lights in this particular account, but the decorations consisted 0:04:35.279 --> 0:04:38.840 of things like roses made out of paper and various 0:04:38.880 --> 0:04:43.120 foods being shoved into the tree, things like apples or 0:04:43.160 --> 0:04:47.080 cookies and sugar. It's very food centric. In fact, there 0:04:47.120 --> 0:04:49.880 was a tradition of raiding the Christmas tree on one 0:04:49.880 --> 0:04:51.480 of the days of Christmas, where the kids get to 0:04:51.520 --> 0:04:54.960 go and actually grab treats from the tree and eat them. 0:04:55.080 --> 0:04:58.960 The first written account to bring up the detail about 0:04:59.200 --> 0:05:03.599 lights in the Christmas tree dates to sixteen sixty. People 0:05:03.600 --> 0:05:07.359 in Germany would pin or otherwise attached candles to branches 0:05:07.480 --> 0:05:10.839 of these trees, and again, frequently these are trees that 0:05:10.880 --> 0:05:13.080 have been cut down and put up inside a house, 0:05:13.160 --> 0:05:17.120 not just trees out in the woods somewhere. Generally speaking, 0:05:17.360 --> 0:05:19.760 the practice was to light the candles only for a 0:05:19.880 --> 0:05:23.200 very short time before you blew them out again. And 0:05:23.279 --> 0:05:25.960 you were never supposed to leave a tree unattended, because, 0:05:25.960 --> 0:05:29.480 as you can imagine, combining a cut tree that might 0:05:29.520 --> 0:05:33.680 be kind of dry with open flames is a recipe 0:05:33.720 --> 0:05:36.440 for disaster. And in fact, there were more than a 0:05:36.440 --> 0:05:39.280 few cases of fires with these trees, some of them 0:05:39.400 --> 0:05:42.760 ending in catastrophe and tragedy. But I'm sure the effect 0:05:42.800 --> 0:05:44.960 was really nice, leaning right up to the moment where 0:05:44.960 --> 0:05:48.320 everything went ablaze. Okay, so let's skip ahead to the 0:05:48.320 --> 0:05:52.160 eighteen hundreds. At that point the tradition extended beyond Germany. 0:05:53.279 --> 0:05:58.320 Harvard professor named Charles Fallen, inspired by stories that he 0:05:58.360 --> 0:06:01.320 had heard in Europe, did a lit up Christmas tree 0:06:01.320 --> 0:06:04.320 here in America. This was believed to be the first 0:06:04.400 --> 0:06:06.560 lit Christmas tree in America, or at least the first 0:06:06.560 --> 0:06:10.360 one on record. In the eighteen forties, in England, Queen 0:06:10.440 --> 0:06:14.080 Victoria and Prince Albert had a Christmas tree famously depicted 0:06:14.120 --> 0:06:17.039 in an illustration that was published in a newspaper that 0:06:17.160 --> 0:06:21.160 likely helped boost the practice over in England. Prince Albert 0:06:21.240 --> 0:06:25.680 brought this over from his homeland in Saxony. So people 0:06:25.760 --> 0:06:28.920 came up with new ways to attach the candles to trees, 0:06:29.080 --> 0:06:32.200 you know, they found more improved methods that would catch 0:06:32.240 --> 0:06:34.880 the wax and things like that. However, there was still 0:06:35.080 --> 0:06:39.920 very much a danger of fire with this particular approach. Then, 0:06:40.000 --> 0:06:43.000 in the later eighteen hundreds we get to Thomas Edison, 0:06:43.360 --> 0:06:46.360 the inventor and entrepreneur who was spending a lot of 0:06:46.400 --> 0:06:49.520 time and resources trying to perfect the light bulb. Which 0:06:49.720 --> 0:06:52.920 he did not invent the light bulb, but he did 0:06:52.960 --> 0:06:55.679 improve upon it, or rather, I should say his lab 0:06:55.880 --> 0:06:59.200 improved upon it. So when he and his engineers managed 0:06:59.240 --> 0:07:01.200 to make a light bulb that could last more than 0:07:01.240 --> 0:07:03.840 just a few hours and could be suitable for general 0:07:03.960 --> 0:07:07.440 use as opposed to stuff like the more dangerous arc 0:07:07.520 --> 0:07:12.560 lamps that, while extremely bright, were not practical for everyday applications, 0:07:13.080 --> 0:07:14.560 he then had to figure out a way, how do 0:07:14.600 --> 0:07:19.320 I sell this idea to cities, right to city officials 0:07:19.360 --> 0:07:22.560 and then further onto the general public. So he wanted 0:07:22.560 --> 0:07:26.040 to convince Manhattan officials that his company should be the 0:07:26.040 --> 0:07:30.040 one to provide electricity and light all of Manhattan. So 0:07:30.320 --> 0:07:33.320 he had his employees hang lights during the holiday season 0:07:33.320 --> 0:07:36.920 in eighteen eighty on the outside of Menlo Park, which 0:07:36.960 --> 0:07:39.560 was an easy view of trains passing by, and it 0:07:39.640 --> 0:07:42.320 got a lot of attention. Now, one of the inventors 0:07:42.360 --> 0:07:46.080 who was working at his Menlo Park facility was Edward 0:07:46.200 --> 0:07:50.360 Hibbert Johnson. Johnson had actually been responsible for giving Edison 0:07:50.480 --> 0:07:54.120 a job at the Automatic Telegraph Company, but later on 0:07:54.560 --> 0:07:57.800 Johnson would end up working closely with Edison to develop 0:07:57.920 --> 0:08:01.440 Menlo Park itself and became an inventor and executive at 0:08:01.440 --> 0:08:04.480 the Edison Light Company. So it's funny because he helped 0:08:04.520 --> 0:08:07.040 get Edison a job early and then he ended up 0:08:07.040 --> 0:08:11.440 working for Edison later. It was at the Menlo Park 0:08:11.440 --> 0:08:15.080 facility where Johnson developed string lights, and these were lights 0:08:15.080 --> 0:08:18.000 that were wired together in series and would serve as 0:08:18.000 --> 0:08:21.440 the basis for Christmas lights. Just moving forward from that point, 0:08:22.040 --> 0:08:24.880 he used those lights to decorate a Christmas tree and 0:08:24.920 --> 0:08:27.520 so Johnson is sometimes referred to as the father of 0:08:27.560 --> 0:08:31.400 electric Christmas tree lights because the original version, the earlier 0:08:31.480 --> 0:08:33.720 version that Edison did that was a string of lights 0:08:33.720 --> 0:08:36.600 they hung up on a building. This was the first 0:08:36.600 --> 0:08:40.559 time where someone was using electric Christmas lights to replace 0:08:40.720 --> 0:08:44.040 the candles that were found on the Germanic Christmas trees. 0:08:44.800 --> 0:08:47.600 His lights, by the way, had bulbs that were red, white, 0:08:47.640 --> 0:08:51.760 and blue. Is quite the patriotic Christmas tree, and like Edison, 0:08:51.840 --> 0:08:53.840 Johnson intended that for this not just to be a 0:08:53.920 --> 0:08:57.760 festive display in the spirit of America and the holiday season, 0:08:58.360 --> 0:09:01.040 but also a marketing effort to get more people to 0:09:01.520 --> 0:09:06.200 support and want and adopt electric lights. There was a 0:09:06.240 --> 0:09:10.679 general distrust in electricity around this time, so these were 0:09:10.720 --> 0:09:13.319 the ways in which Edison and his associates could try 0:09:13.360 --> 0:09:17.040 to win people over to this new technology, and adoption 0:09:17.120 --> 0:09:19.480 did not take off right away. So for one thing, 0:09:20.120 --> 0:09:23.400 no New York based reporters wrote about this Christmas tree 0:09:23.520 --> 0:09:27.240 at all, but one reporter for a Detroit newspaper did 0:09:27.320 --> 0:09:30.360 publish an account of what it was like seeing the 0:09:30.440 --> 0:09:33.600 Christmas tree all lit up. The next big development in 0:09:33.640 --> 0:09:37.800 the adoption of Christmas lights would come in eight when 0:09:37.920 --> 0:09:41.680 US President Grover Cleveland incorporated them in decorations for the 0:09:41.720 --> 0:09:44.800 Christmas Tree at the White House. So we're gonna go 0:09:44.840 --> 0:09:47.600 off on a little tangent here some fun trivia facts 0:09:47.720 --> 0:09:52.360 about Grover Cleveland. So he's the only US president whoever 0:09:52.400 --> 0:09:56.920 served two non consecutive terms, meaning he was both our 0:09:56.960 --> 0:10:01.000 twenty second and our twenty fourth president of the United States. 0:10:01.520 --> 0:10:03.440 The lighting of the Christmas tree would be during his 0:10:03.640 --> 0:10:07.240 second term as president. And just in case you're wondering 0:10:07.360 --> 0:10:10.880 the twenty third president, the one who interrupted those two 0:10:11.040 --> 0:10:15.600 terms was Benjamin Harrison, the grandson of our ninth President, 0:10:15.920 --> 0:10:19.960 William Henry Harrison. Sorry, I recently, I've been showing up 0:10:20.000 --> 0:10:22.640 on a lot of ridiculous history episodes and sometimes that 0:10:22.640 --> 0:10:27.880 stuff just gonna sticks with you. Anyway. Cleveland's Tree, Grover 0:10:28.080 --> 0:10:32.600 Cleveland's tree featured one hundred lights with bulbs of various colors, 0:10:32.600 --> 0:10:34.960 and it must have been a really impressive site for 0:10:35.000 --> 0:10:38.080 the time. Some of the movers and shakers in America, 0:10:38.360 --> 0:10:41.679 in other words, people had a ton of cash to burn. 0:10:41.920 --> 0:10:44.560 They began to put up their own decorated and lit 0:10:44.760 --> 0:10:47.600 Christmas trees. But it was not something the average person 0:10:47.640 --> 0:10:50.240 could do. Because at that time, most of the United 0:10:50.280 --> 0:10:54.160 States wasn't wired for electricity, so to even have a 0:10:54.280 --> 0:10:56.920 lit Christmas tree with electric lights, you would have to 0:10:56.960 --> 0:11:00.400 set up a generator. You'd also typically have to hire 0:11:00.400 --> 0:11:04.439 an electrician to actually wire it up, and in today's money, 0:11:04.520 --> 0:11:07.200 that would mean that decorating a tree could cost at 0:11:07.280 --> 0:11:10.840 least a couple of thousands of dollars, So only the 0:11:10.840 --> 0:11:13.640 hoity toity folks who wanted to show off their wealth 0:11:13.640 --> 0:11:15.959 could really afford to have a Christmas tree with electric 0:11:16.040 --> 0:11:19.199 lights at that time. Anyway, over the course of the 0:11:19.240 --> 0:11:23.120 early nineteen hundreds, electric lights began to gain popularity as 0:11:23.120 --> 0:11:26.560 people became more comfortable with the idea of electricity. And 0:11:26.600 --> 0:11:29.319 it's really no wonder that folks were nervous at first. 0:11:29.720 --> 0:11:33.080 Fire is something you can see, at least in most cases, 0:11:33.400 --> 0:11:37.400 but electricity could be deadly but was also invisible. And 0:11:37.520 --> 0:11:41.200 Edison's company had already engaged in some pretty heavy smear 0:11:41.240 --> 0:11:45.840 campaigns against alternating current, since Edison was pushing direct current 0:11:45.880 --> 0:11:48.959 as a means to distribute electricity regionally, and a lot 0:11:49.000 --> 0:11:52.640 of those events and demonstrations that his company held involves 0:11:52.640 --> 0:11:56.320 showing off how deadly electricity could be, so they were 0:11:56.400 --> 0:11:59.360 kind of feeding into that fear. But the allure of 0:11:59.400 --> 0:12:02.640 the lights was undeniable. And with that, I mean not 0:12:02.720 --> 0:12:04.920 just Christmas lights. I mean you're running of the mill 0:12:05.040 --> 0:12:09.120 light bulbs. Now. Even in n three, when General Electric 0:12:09.200 --> 0:12:13.160 introduced string Christmas light kits, which will let people string 0:12:13.240 --> 0:12:15.880 up their own lights at home without necessarily the use 0:12:15.960 --> 0:12:19.480 of an electrician, it was still really expensive a string 0:12:19.520 --> 0:12:22.840 of lights, and General Electric actually referred to these strings 0:12:22.880 --> 0:12:27.079 as festoons. Anyway. The string of lights consisted of eight 0:12:27.240 --> 0:12:30.520 whole light bulb sockets and they would hold Edison light 0:12:30.520 --> 0:12:34.199 bulbs and it cost the equivalent of about three hundred 0:12:34.400 --> 0:12:37.800 dollars today. That's just the lights, and this was not 0:12:37.920 --> 0:12:40.679 something that the average family would necessarily spring for. Also, 0:12:40.760 --> 0:12:43.360 you wouldn't buy these kits. You would rent them for 0:12:43.400 --> 0:12:46.360 three hundred dollars, so after the rental period you would 0:12:46.360 --> 0:12:49.600 actually have to return them. So yikes. Now, the bulbs 0:12:49.640 --> 0:12:52.800 on these things were small, round bulbs, almost like manature 0:12:52.880 --> 0:12:57.200 incandescent light bulbs. Actually that's exactly what they were, but 0:12:57.400 --> 0:12:59.640 I'm talking more about the form factor rather than the 0:12:59.640 --> 0:13:04.720 actual lighting mechanism. In nineteen nineteen, General Electric introduced a 0:13:04.760 --> 0:13:07.560 new bulb shape and filament. It was more of a 0:13:07.600 --> 0:13:11.640 flame shape, is that sort of classic, large, kind of clunky, 0:13:11.720 --> 0:13:14.520 retro looking light bulb. That was the general shape that 0:13:14.600 --> 0:13:17.200 they introduced, and it had a filament made out of 0:13:17.600 --> 0:13:21.439 Mazda toungusten. The filament is the part of the incandescent 0:13:21.480 --> 0:13:24.800 bulb that actually glows. The company would use Mazda filaments 0:13:24.800 --> 0:13:28.240 in all sorts of lamp bulbs, not just Christmas ones. Now, 0:13:28.240 --> 0:13:31.480 there were a couple of possibly apocryphal stories about some 0:13:31.559 --> 0:13:34.960 smaller companies around this time that played an important role 0:13:35.000 --> 0:13:38.920 in popularizing Christmas lights. One of those stories is about 0:13:38.960 --> 0:13:43.040 a telephone company employee named Ralph E. Morris who at 0:13:43.080 --> 0:13:46.360 some point. Different versions of this story can date it 0:13:46.400 --> 0:13:50.240 to either eight, the same year that Grover Cleveland was 0:13:50.320 --> 0:13:53.200 lighting up the White House, or nineteen o eight. There's 0:13:53.200 --> 0:13:56.160 a pretty big discrepancy, but the stories say that he 0:13:56.240 --> 0:13:59.400 looked at a telephone switchboard, and telephone switchboards had these 0:13:59.440 --> 0:14:02.199 little tiny light bulbs mounted in them that would light 0:14:02.280 --> 0:14:04.920 up when you were making connections, and he thought those 0:14:04.960 --> 0:14:08.320 little light bulbs might make nice Christmas decorations. So he 0:14:08.400 --> 0:14:10.760 took a bunch of those little lightbulbs, a bunch of 0:14:10.800 --> 0:14:15.040 telephone wire, wired them all together, electrified the wire, and 0:14:15.280 --> 0:14:18.920 made up a little lit Christmas tree, a little fake 0:14:19.400 --> 0:14:22.520 lit Christmas tree, because the story says that he made 0:14:22.800 --> 0:14:26.320 a makeshift Christmas tree out of feathers. I don't know 0:14:26.400 --> 0:14:29.040 exactly how he did it, but that's what the story says. 0:14:29.400 --> 0:14:31.840 His son would later write an article claiming that his 0:14:31.920 --> 0:14:37.720 father invented Christmas lights, which wasn't quite accurate. They predated this, 0:14:37.800 --> 0:14:40.120 but I'm pretty sure it was an honest mistake, not 0:14:40.280 --> 0:14:45.920 something that was done, you know, maliciously. Now. The other, 0:14:45.960 --> 0:14:49.920 possibly an apocryphal story involves a guy named Albert Sadaka. 0:14:50.800 --> 0:14:53.720 This story goes that when Sedaka was fifteen, he heard 0:14:53.760 --> 0:14:57.480 about a terrible tragedy involving a deadly fire that began 0:14:57.520 --> 0:15:01.600 when a Christmas tree lit with candles fire and people 0:15:01.640 --> 0:15:05.520 died as a result. His family made novelty lights with 0:15:05.560 --> 0:15:08.840 white bulbs, so he thought, hey, how about we change 0:15:08.840 --> 0:15:12.720 out those regular bulbs with bulbs of different colors and 0:15:12.760 --> 0:15:15.200 we use electric lights instead of candles to light up 0:15:15.200 --> 0:15:18.120 a Christmas tree. According to this story, he and his 0:15:18.200 --> 0:15:20.800 brothers began to do just that, and a few years later, 0:15:20.960 --> 0:15:23.840 they led an effort to bring together several small competing 0:15:23.920 --> 0:15:26.800 light companies. They're all going for the same customers, and 0:15:26.840 --> 0:15:31.040 they formed the National Outfit Manufacturers Association, or NOMA, which 0:15:31.080 --> 0:15:34.480 would become its own company and by became the leading 0:15:34.520 --> 0:15:39.120 manufacturing company for electric Christmas lights. Now, as power companies 0:15:39.120 --> 0:15:42.080 wired up the United States for electricity, the popularity of 0:15:42.120 --> 0:15:45.480 electric Christmas lights began to grow. In nineteen twenty, a 0:15:45.560 --> 0:15:49.200 hardware store owner in California named Frederick Nash decorated trees 0:15:49.200 --> 0:15:52.640 outside his establishment, and that quickly grew into a tradition 0:15:52.640 --> 0:15:55.280 in which a nine block stretch of the road in 0:15:55.360 --> 0:15:58.240 front of his business would end up having trees just 0:15:58.360 --> 0:16:01.240 draped in lights, and it became the first big documented 0:16:01.280 --> 0:16:05.840 outdoor Christmas lights display. When we come back, i'll talk 0:16:05.920 --> 0:16:08.200 more about the evolution of Christmas lights, and then we'll 0:16:08.240 --> 0:16:12.040 dive into how the heck they work, and in the 0:16:12.040 --> 0:16:15.440 case of traditional Christmas lights, how they don't work if 0:16:15.480 --> 0:16:18.680 just one bulb goes bad. But let's take a quick break. 0:16:29.120 --> 0:16:31.040 I've got a little bit more to go on to 0:16:31.160 --> 0:16:34.080 the history of Christmas lights and some of the interesting 0:16:34.120 --> 0:16:36.200 things about them before we get into how they work. 0:16:36.320 --> 0:16:40.160 So by the late nineteen thirties, electric Christmas lights had 0:16:40.160 --> 0:16:45.000 become a popular new tradition, with homeowners and businesses alike 0:16:45.680 --> 0:16:49.080 uh using them to create bright, colorful displays, and in 0:16:49.160 --> 0:16:52.800 some cases they went a little bit overboard. A few 0:16:52.800 --> 0:16:56.560 places became truly famous for their decorated trees and buildings. 0:16:56.920 --> 0:16:59.360 When the United States entered into World War Two and 0:16:59.400 --> 0:17:02.480 there was an learn about the possibility of cities being bombed, 0:17:02.920 --> 0:17:05.520 there were blackout orders in various cities like New York, 0:17:05.880 --> 0:17:08.280 and that meant that Christmas lights would actually go dark 0:17:08.359 --> 0:17:11.119 in nineteen forty four in New York City, but with 0:17:11.320 --> 0:17:13.520 the war's end the following year, people made up for 0:17:13.600 --> 0:17:18.560 lost time. Meanwhile, tastes began to change. In America, families 0:17:18.600 --> 0:17:22.080 in the late nineteen fifties were introduced to a new invention, 0:17:22.640 --> 0:17:27.000 the aluminium Christmas tree. Yeah, I can't even I can't 0:17:27.000 --> 0:17:30.560 believe this this really happened either, guys. These were trees 0:17:31.240 --> 0:17:34.080 made out of aluminium, a space age material that was 0:17:34.520 --> 0:17:38.359 clearly so much better than a freshly cut fir tree. However, 0:17:39.040 --> 0:17:42.200 the Christmas lights of the day, which were still incandescent 0:17:42.240 --> 0:17:47.359 bulbs in sometimes questionable wires, would get way too hot 0:17:47.400 --> 0:17:51.600 for aluminium trees. They also could potentially create an electric 0:17:51.680 --> 0:17:57.080 shock hazard because aluminum can conduct electricity. Plus, those aluminium 0:17:57.119 --> 0:18:00.160 trees had needles quote unquote made out of foil, which 0:18:00.160 --> 0:18:03.800 would easily melt. So instead of hanging electric lights on 0:18:03.800 --> 0:18:07.600 the tree, companies began to manufacture lamps that had a 0:18:07.720 --> 0:18:11.639 rotating color wheel. And it's just what it sounds like, 0:18:11.880 --> 0:18:14.480 and it's not all that different from what was inside 0:18:14.560 --> 0:18:18.760 old mechanical television sets before electric TV was invented. So 0:18:18.840 --> 0:18:22.000 you've got a bulb that's what provides the light, kind 0:18:22.000 --> 0:18:24.119 of like a projector, and in front of the bulb, 0:18:24.480 --> 0:18:28.200 you have a wheel that has different panes of colored plastic, 0:18:28.680 --> 0:18:32.719 and this wheel rotates past the bulb, and different colors 0:18:32.760 --> 0:18:37.000 of light shine out of your glorious lamp towards your 0:18:37.160 --> 0:18:42.840 even more glorious aluminum Christmas tree. It was a thing, y'all. Now, 0:18:42.880 --> 0:18:46.399 I can't say I personally found it appealing, but back 0:18:46.440 --> 0:18:51.320 then it was selling like gangbusters. Unfortunately for companies like Noma, 0:18:51.400 --> 0:18:54.800 the leading manufacturer of Christmas lights, it meant that there 0:18:54.840 --> 0:18:58.360 was a drastic drop in Christmas lights sales as these 0:18:58.359 --> 0:19:01.760 aluminium trees became all the eight Noma would actually end 0:19:01.840 --> 0:19:04.760 up going into bankruptcy, and today it exists as a 0:19:04.800 --> 0:19:08.000 brand name. But that's about it. The era of the 0:19:08.040 --> 0:19:11.960 aluminum tree lasted about a decade, upon which time many 0:19:11.960 --> 0:19:15.760 people either went back to using the previously live trees 0:19:16.400 --> 0:19:20.240 or they switched to more natural looking artificial trees, and 0:19:20.280 --> 0:19:24.360 that meant the electric lights were back baby. However, because 0:19:24.520 --> 0:19:28.400 of the American manufacturers going out of business during the 0:19:28.440 --> 0:19:32.159 reign of aluminum Terror, the Christmas lights on the market 0:19:32.280 --> 0:19:35.399 mostly came from other countries, so America would no longer 0:19:35.440 --> 0:19:38.800 be king of the electric Christmas light all right. Now 0:19:38.800 --> 0:19:41.719 we're getting up to about nineteen seventy and the introduction 0:19:41.840 --> 0:19:44.840 of the mini light. So for a very long time, 0:19:45.000 --> 0:19:48.600 the typical Christmas light was a five or ten watt bulb, 0:19:49.200 --> 0:19:52.000 typically the size of a night light bulb, those little 0:19:52.320 --> 0:19:55.280 kind of cone shaped bulbs that I was talking about, 0:19:55.320 --> 0:19:58.199 the retro style, They were pretty big. These were the 0:19:58.200 --> 0:19:59.919 type of lights that I grew up with when I 0:20:00.080 --> 0:20:02.000 was a kid. That's the kind we had on our trees, 0:20:02.080 --> 0:20:06.480 the big, big, bright lights. I still miss those. But 0:20:06.560 --> 0:20:08.919 they drew a lot of power because the string of 0:20:09.040 --> 0:20:12.720 fifty five what bulbs means that you're consuming two fifty 0:20:12.800 --> 0:20:16.960 what's and most people were using multiple strands, like one 0:20:16.960 --> 0:20:19.520 string wouldn't do it. You might have three strands, three 0:20:19.560 --> 0:20:22.199 to five for a tree, maybe five to ten for 0:20:22.280 --> 0:20:25.160 your house. So you're consuming an enormous amount of power 0:20:25.200 --> 0:20:28.000 when you're having this stuff lit up. So the Christmas 0:20:28.040 --> 0:20:32.040 lights were greedy for electricity, then they pushed electric bills 0:20:32.080 --> 0:20:35.520 pretty high. They would also get really hot, which you 0:20:35.560 --> 0:20:38.240 know I mentioned back with the aluminium trees. Touching a 0:20:38.280 --> 0:20:40.920 bulb could give you a little bit of a minor burn, 0:20:41.240 --> 0:20:43.600 as I found out on more than one occasion when 0:20:43.640 --> 0:20:46.840 I was a kid, because I had three qualities that 0:20:47.000 --> 0:20:51.600 guaranteed I was gonna get burned. First, I was curious. Second, 0:20:52.160 --> 0:20:55.959 I was foolish or maybe stupid, and third I had 0:20:55.960 --> 0:20:59.880 a really short memory, I guess anyway, the bulbs were popular. 0:21:00.280 --> 0:21:03.640 They were colorful, but they were also wasteful and expensive. 0:21:04.320 --> 0:21:09.080 The mini light would become a popular alternative to that bulky, hot, 0:21:09.119 --> 0:21:12.639 expensive Christmas light of the past. The mini lights are, 0:21:12.680 --> 0:21:16.679 as the name implies, smaller, They only need two point 0:21:16.720 --> 0:21:20.680 five volts of electricity, and they don't get nearly as hot. 0:21:20.720 --> 0:21:23.320 Although they are still incandescent bulbs, so they still do 0:21:23.520 --> 0:21:26.200 generate heat. They're just not as hot as those larger 0:21:26.240 --> 0:21:29.760 bulbs were. It does, however, raise a question, how do 0:21:29.800 --> 0:21:33.320 you supply electricity to a two and a half volt 0:21:33.440 --> 0:21:37.560 socket if your source is an outlet that's putting out 0:21:37.600 --> 0:21:40.399 a hundred twenty volts. This is a good time to 0:21:40.480 --> 0:21:44.880 transition into a talk about circuits. So a quick reminder 0:21:45.400 --> 0:21:49.560 in electricity, voltage is sort of like water pressure in 0:21:49.600 --> 0:21:53.160 a water system. It's how hard the electricity is being 0:21:53.200 --> 0:21:55.240 pushed through. You can think of it like that. It's 0:21:55.280 --> 0:21:59.000 not exactly the same, but that's a rough analogy. It's 0:21:59.040 --> 0:22:03.359 the behind the movement of electricity, and a one volts 0:22:03.400 --> 0:22:07.280 supply far overshadows a two and a half volt load. 0:22:07.760 --> 0:22:11.080 So imagine like having a fire hose of water directed 0:22:11.080 --> 0:22:13.600 at you. You've got a little shot glass that you're 0:22:13.640 --> 0:22:15.480 filling up and dumping out. It would just be way 0:22:15.480 --> 0:22:20.119 too much. But these Christmas lights were chained together in series, 0:22:20.560 --> 0:22:24.600 which meant one bulb socket connects to the next bulb 0:22:24.680 --> 0:22:28.200 socket in the same circuit and so on. So if 0:22:28.240 --> 0:22:31.399 you've got two two and a half volt sockets, you 0:22:31.480 --> 0:22:34.760 end up with a load that requires five volts. If 0:22:34.760 --> 0:22:36.640 you were to multiply two and a half volts by 0:22:36.880 --> 0:22:40.040 I don't know, let's say forty eight, you'd get a 0:22:40.080 --> 0:22:43.320 hundred twenty. So yeah, if you string together forty eight 0:22:43.400 --> 0:22:45.639 light bulb sockets and each one of those is a 0:22:45.680 --> 0:22:48.359 two and a half volt socket, you end up with 0:22:48.480 --> 0:22:51.960 a full load what requires a hundred twenty volts. Problem 0:22:52.000 --> 0:22:54.919 solved now. Typically companies would actually bump that up to 0:22:55.119 --> 0:22:59.960 fifty light sockets per series, and those extra two socket 0:23:00.359 --> 0:23:03.800 would mean that each individual bulb would be slightly, maybe 0:23:03.840 --> 0:23:07.880 even imperceptibly dimmer than it would be if you only 0:23:07.880 --> 0:23:10.959 had forty eight, but it wouldn't be so dim that 0:23:11.040 --> 0:23:14.879 it would make a huge difference. So imagine a pathway 0:23:14.920 --> 0:23:18.679 from an electric outlet that goes down a line of wires, 0:23:18.760 --> 0:23:22.199 and those wires connect to fifty bulbs in series, so 0:23:22.280 --> 0:23:25.800 bulb one, the bulb two, the bulb three, etcetera. This 0:23:25.880 --> 0:23:29.000 represents the path that electricity takes, and along the way, 0:23:29.240 --> 0:23:31.960 the electricity is doing work in the form of producing 0:23:32.040 --> 0:23:35.159 light with those little light bulbs. And here's where a 0:23:35.280 --> 0:23:38.720 drawback of Christmas lights comes in. Let's say one of 0:23:38.720 --> 0:23:41.639 those bulbs burns out. Well, a burnt out bulb is 0:23:41.640 --> 0:23:45.160 going to break that pathway for the electricity. It opens 0:23:45.240 --> 0:23:48.960 the circuit, and because the path is broken and electricity 0:23:49.040 --> 0:23:53.200 needs that clear unbroken path, the whole string of lights 0:23:53.320 --> 0:23:56.520