Speaker 1: Welcome to tex Stuff production from I Heart Radio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and happy holidays, frum tech Stuff. We are currently off
Speaker 1: work today. It is a holiday for us. My name,
Speaker 1: by the way, is Jonathan Strickland, Diamond, executive producer with
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and how the Tech are you. We
Speaker 1: didn't want to leave you without an episode today, so
Speaker 1: today we're bringing you a rerun this episode originally published
Speaker 1: on November two thousand nineteen. It is titled Lighting Up
Speaker 1: the Holidays, and as you might guess, it's about the
Speaker 1: incorporation of electric lights in particular in holiday celebrations, and
Speaker 1: also you know, talking a little bit about Stranger Things
Speaker 1: and why it was a challenge to make the holiday
Speaker 1: lights light up in the way they do in the
Speaker 1: first season of Stranger Things. So sit back, relax, and
Speaker 1: enjoy this episode about lighting up the Holidays. Now, before
Speaker 1: I dive into all of that, I want to acknowledge
Speaker 1: a few things first. While I'll be talking about Christmas lights,
Speaker 1: there are many people of different faiths, ethnicities, regions, etcetera
Speaker 1: who celebrates 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 Maccabees, 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 the
Speaker 1: bottle should only have lasted a single night. Then there's
Speaker 1: also the celebration of Kwanza, where families like candles in
Speaker 1: the cannara, and the candles represent the seven principles of
Speaker 1: the holiday. But getting back to Christmas lights, there's actually
Speaker 1: an older tradition than the sort of Christmas tree lights,
Speaker 1: in which Christian families would set out candles within view
Speaker 1: of a window as a symbol to alert fellow Christians
Speaker 1: that the family inside the house was they were made
Speaker 1: up of observing Christians, and that fellow Christians would be
Speaker 1: welcome to come into that house to worship with the family.
Speaker 1: But the Christmas lights we see every year really have
Speaker 1: their roots pun intended in a Germanic tradition of the
Speaker 1: Christmas tree. So why would you ever cut down a
Speaker 1: tree and bring it inside in the first place. Well, again,
Speaker 1: one of those things that makes sense as you start
Speaker 1: to think about all the details. Plants like fur trees
Speaker 1: and holly remain green even in the winter, which otherwise
Speaker 1: pretty much wipes out everything else and makes it brown
Speaker 1: and dead, so or appearing to be dead. So these
Speaker 1: plants became symbols of resilience and everlasting life. So people
Speaker 1: would cut down some of those plants and bring them
Speaker 1: indoors to remind them of that. But you know, then
Speaker 1: the plants would eventually just dry out and turn brown,
Speaker 1: and thus negate the whole reason for bringing them inside.
Speaker 1: But you know, humans have never been rational creatures. There
Speaker 1: are some unsupported legends surrounding the origins of the German
Speaker 1: Christmas tree uh sometimes referred to as the Tannenbaum, but
Speaker 1: really Tannenbaum is more of a word for fur trees
Speaker 1: in general, not just those all decked out with bowls
Speaker 1: of holly and whatnot. But one legend has it that
Speaker 1: Martin Luther, the Reformer, who caused a bit of a
Speaker 1: Ruckus in the fifteen hundreds, when he, you know, decided
Speaker 1: to criticize the Catholic Church that he had started the
Speaker 1: tradition of the Christmas tree. However, the earliest written accounts
Speaker 1: on record that mentioned this tradition date to six oh five.
Speaker 1: Now that doesn't mean that's when the tradition started, of course,
Speaker 1: it's just the earliest written account that we happen to have.
Speaker 1: Scholars think the tradition might date back at least to
Speaker 1: the mid sixteenth century, though that would still be after
Speaker 1: Martin Luther had died. So anyway, that sixteen o five account,
Speaker 1: all it says is that the people would set up
Speaker 1: Christmas trees in their rooms in Strasbourg. There's no mention
Speaker 1: of lights in this particular account, but the decorations consisted
Speaker 1: of things like roses made out of paper and various
Speaker 1: foods being shoved into the tree, things like apples or
Speaker 1: cookies and sugar. It's very food centric. In fact, there
Speaker 1: was a tradition of raiding the Christmas tree on one
Speaker 1: of the days of Christmas, where the kids get to
Speaker 1: go and actually grab treats from the tree and eat them.
Speaker 1: The first written account to bring up the detail about
Speaker 1: lights in the Christmas tree dates to sixteen sixty. People
Speaker 1: in Germany would pin or otherwise attached 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 disaster. And in fact, there were more than a
Speaker 1: few cases of fires with these trees, some of them
Speaker 1: ending in catastrophe and tragedy. But I'm sure the effect
Speaker 1: was really nice, leaning right up to the moment where
Speaker 1: everything went ablaze. Okay, so let's skip ahead to the
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds. At that point the tradition extended beyond Germany.
Speaker 1: Harvard professor named Charles Fallen, inspired by stories that he
Speaker 1: had heard in Europe, did a lit up Christmas tree
Speaker 1: here in America. This was believed to be the first
Speaker 1: lit Christmas tree in America, or at least the first
Speaker 1: one on record. In the eighteen forties, in England, Queen
Speaker 1: Victoria and Prince Albert had a Christmas tree famously depicted
Speaker 1: in an illustration that was published in a newspaper that
Speaker 1: likely helped boost the practice over in England. Prince Albert
Speaker 1: brought this over from his homeland in Saxony. So people
Speaker 1: came up with new ways to attach the candles to trees,
Speaker 1: you know, they found more improved methods that would catch
Speaker 1: the wax and things like that. However, there was still
Speaker 1: very much a danger of fire with this particular approach. Then,
Speaker 1: in the later eighteen hundreds we get to Thomas Edison,
Speaker 1: the inventor and entrepreneur who was spending a lot of
Speaker 1: time and resources trying to perfect the light bulb. Which
Speaker 1: he did not invent the light bulb, but he did
Speaker 1: improve upon it, or rather, I should say his lab
Speaker 1: improved upon it. So when he and his engineers managed
Speaker 1: to make a light bulb that could last more than
Speaker 1: just a few hours and could be suitable for general
Speaker 1: use as opposed to stuff like the more dangerous arc
Speaker 1: lamps that, while extremely bright, were not practical for everyday applications,
Speaker 1: he then had to figure out a way, how do
Speaker 1: I sell this idea to cities, right to city officials
Speaker 1: and then further onto the general public. So he wanted
Speaker 1: to convince Manhattan officials that his company should be the
Speaker 1: one to provide electricity and light all of Manhattan. So
Speaker 1: he had his employees hang lights during the holiday season
Speaker 1: in eighteen eighty on the outside of Menlo Park, which
Speaker 1: was an easy view of trains passing by, and it
Speaker 1: got a lot of attention. Now, one of the inventors
Speaker 1: who was working at his Menlo Park facility was Edward
Speaker 1: Hibbert Johnson. Johnson had actually been responsible for giving Edison
Speaker 1: a job at the Automatic Telegraph Company, but later on
Speaker 1: Johnson would end up working closely with Edison to develop
Speaker 1: Menlo Park itself and became an inventor and executive at
Speaker 1: the Edison Light Company. So it's funny because he helped
Speaker 1: get Edison a job early and then he ended up
Speaker 1: working for Edison later. It was at the Menlo Park
Speaker 1: facility where Johnson developed string lights, and these were lights
Speaker 1: that were wired together in series and would serve as
Speaker 1: the basis for Christmas lights. Just moving forward from that point,
Speaker 1: he used those lights to decorate a Christmas tree and
Speaker 1: so Johnson is sometimes referred to as the father of
Speaker 1: electric Christmas tree lights because the original version, the earlier
Speaker 1: version that Edison did that was a string of lights
Speaker 1: they hung up on a building. This was the first
Speaker 1: time where someone was using electric Christmas lights to replace
Speaker 1: the candles that were found on the Germanic Christmas trees.
Speaker 1: His lights, by the way, had bulbs that were red, white,
Speaker 1: and blue. Is quite the patriotic Christmas tree, and like Edison,
Speaker 1: Johnson intended that for this not just to be a
Speaker 1: festive display in the spirit of America and the holiday season,
Speaker 1: but also a marketing effort to get more people to
Speaker 1: support and want and adopt electric lights. There was a
Speaker 1: general distrust in electricity around this time, so these were
Speaker 1: the ways in which Edison and his associates could try
Speaker 1: to win people over to this new technology, and adoption
Speaker 1: did not take off right away. So for one thing,
Speaker 1: no New York based reporters wrote about this Christmas tree
Speaker 1: at all, but one reporter for a Detroit newspaper did
Speaker 1: publish an account of what it was like seeing the
Speaker 1: Christmas tree all lit up. The next big development in
Speaker 1: the adoption of Christmas lights would come in eight when
Speaker 1: US President Grover Cleveland incorporated them in decorations for the
Speaker 1: Christmas Tree at the White House. So we're gonna 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've been showing up
Speaker 1: on a lot of ridiculous history episodes and sometimes that
Speaker 1: stuff just gonna sticks with you. Anyway. Cleveland's Tree, Grover
Speaker 1: Cleveland's tree featured one hundred lights with bulbs of various colors,
Speaker 1: and it must have been a really impressive site for
Speaker 1: the time. Some of the movers and shakers in America,
Speaker 1: in other words, people had a ton of cash to burn.
Speaker 1: They began to put up their own decorated and lit
Speaker 1: Christmas trees. But it was not something the average person
Speaker 1: could do. Because at that time, most of the United
Speaker 1: States wasn't wired for electricity, so to even have a
Speaker 1: lit Christmas tree with electric lights, you would have to
Speaker 1: set up a generator. You'd also typically have to hire
Speaker 1: an electrician to actually wire it up, and in today's money,
Speaker 1: that would mean that decorating a tree could cost at
Speaker 1: least a couple of thousands of dollars, So only the
Speaker 1: hoity toity folks who wanted to show off their wealth
Speaker 1: could really afford to have a Christmas tree with electric
Speaker 1: lights at that time. Anyway, over the course of the
Speaker 1: early nineteen hundreds, electric lights began to gain popularity as
Speaker 1: people became more comfortable with the idea of electricity. And
Speaker 1: it's really no wonder that folks were nervous at first.
Speaker 1: Fire is something you can see, at least in most cases,
Speaker 1: but electricity could be deadly but was also invisible. And
Speaker 1: Edison's company had already engaged in some pretty heavy smear
Speaker 1: campaigns against alternating current, since Edison was pushing direct current
Speaker 1: as a means to distribute electricity regionally, and a lot
Speaker 1: of those events and demonstrations that his company held involves
Speaker 1: showing off how deadly electricity could be, so they were
Speaker 1: kind of feeding into that fear. But the allure of
Speaker 1: the lights was undeniable. And with that, I mean not
Speaker 1: just Christmas lights. I mean you're running of the mill
Speaker 1: light bulbs. Now. Even in n three, when General Electric
Speaker 1: introduced string Christmas light kits, which will let people string
Speaker 1: up their own lights at home without necessarily the use
Speaker 1: of an electrician, it was still really expensive a string
Speaker 1: of lights, and General Electric actually referred to these strings
Speaker 1: as festoons. Anyway. The string of lights consisted of eight
Speaker 1: whole light bulb sockets and they would hold Edison light
Speaker 1: bulbs and it cost the equivalent of about three hundred
Speaker 1: dollars today. That's just the lights, and this was not
Speaker 1: something that the average family would necessarily spring for. Also,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't buy these kits. You would rent them for
Speaker 1: three hundred dollars, so after the rental period you would
Speaker 1: actually have to return them. So yikes. Now, the bulbs
Speaker 1: on these things were small, round bulbs, almost like manature
Speaker 1: incandescent light bulbs. Actually that's exactly what they were, but
Speaker 1: I'm talking more about the form factor rather than the
Speaker 1: actual lighting mechanism. In nineteen nineteen, General Electric introduced a
Speaker 1: new bulb shape and filament. It was more of a
Speaker 1: flame shape, is that sort of classic, large, kind of clunky,
Speaker 1: retro looking light bulb. That was the general shape that
Speaker 1: they introduced, and it had a filament made out of
Speaker 1: Mazda toungusten. The filament is the part of the incandescent
Speaker 1: bulb that actually glows. The company would use Mazda filaments
Speaker 1: in all sorts of lamp bulbs, not just Christmas ones. Now,
Speaker 1: there were a couple of possibly apocryphal stories about some
Speaker 1: smaller companies around this time that played an important role
Speaker 1: in popularizing Christmas lights. One of those stories is about
Speaker 1: a telephone company employee named Ralph E. Morris who at
Speaker 1: some point. Different versions of this story can date it
Speaker 1: to either eight, the same year that Grover Cleveland was
Speaker 1: lighting up the White House, or nineteen o eight. There's
Speaker 1: a pretty big discrepancy, but the stories say that he
Speaker 1: looked at a telephone switchboard, and telephone switchboards had these
Speaker 1: little tiny light bulbs mounted in them that would light
Speaker 1: up when you were making connections, and he thought those
Speaker 1: little light bulbs might make nice Christmas decorations. So he
Speaker 1: took a bunch of those little lightbulbs, a bunch of
Speaker 1: telephone wire, wired them all together, electrified the wire, and
Speaker 1: made up a little lit Christmas tree, a little fake
Speaker 1: lit Christmas tree, because the story says that he made
Speaker 1: a makeshift Christmas tree out of feathers. I don't know
Speaker 1: exactly how he did it, but that's what the story says.
Speaker 1: His son would later write an article claiming that his
Speaker 1: father invented Christmas lights, which wasn't quite accurate. They predated this,
Speaker 1: but I'm pretty sure it was an honest mistake, not
Speaker 1: something that was done, you know, maliciously. Now. The other,
Speaker 1: possibly an apocryphal story involves a guy named Albert Sadaka.
Speaker 1: This story goes that when Sedaka 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 fire and people
Speaker 1: died as a result. His family made novelty lights with
Speaker 1: white bulbs, so he thought, hey, how about we change
Speaker 1: out those regular bulbs with bulbs of different colors and
Speaker 1: we use electric lights instead of candles to light up
Speaker 1: a Christmas tree. According to this story, he and his
Speaker 1: brothers began to do just that, and a few years later,
Speaker 1: they led an effort to bring together several small competing
Speaker 1: light companies. They're all going for the same customers, and
Speaker 1: they formed the National Outfit Manufacturers Association, or NOMA, which
Speaker 1: would become its own company and by became the leading
Speaker 1: manufacturing company for electric Christmas lights. Now, as power companies
Speaker 1: wired up the United States for electricity, the popularity of
Speaker 1: electric Christmas lights began to grow. In nineteen twenty, a
Speaker 1: hardware store owner in California named Frederick Nash decorated trees
Speaker 1: outside his establishment, and that quickly grew into a tradition
Speaker 1: in which a nine block stretch of the road in
Speaker 1: front of his business would end up having trees just
Speaker 1: draped in lights, and it became the first big documented
Speaker 1: outdoor Christmas lights display. When we come back, i'll talk
Speaker 1: more about the evolution of Christmas lights, and then we'll
Speaker 1: dive into how the heck they work, and in the
Speaker 1: case of traditional Christmas lights, how they don't work if
Speaker 1: just one bulb goes bad. But let's take a quick break.
Speaker 1: I've got a little bit more to go on to
Speaker 1: the history of Christmas lights and some of the interesting
Speaker 1: things about them before we get into how they work.
Speaker 1: So by the late nineteen thirties, electric Christmas lights had
Speaker 1: become a popular new tradition, with homeowners and businesses alike
Speaker 1: uh using them to create bright, colorful displays, and in
Speaker 1: some cases they went a little bit overboard. A few
Speaker 1: places became truly famous for their decorated trees and buildings.
Speaker 1: When the United States entered into World War Two and
Speaker 1: there was an learn about the possibility of cities being bombed,
Speaker 1: there were blackout orders in various cities like New York,
Speaker 1: and that meant that Christmas lights would actually go dark
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty four in New York City, but with
Speaker 1: the war's end the following year, people made up for
Speaker 1: lost time. Meanwhile, tastes began to change. In America, families
Speaker 1: in the late nineteen fifties were introduced to a new invention,
Speaker 1: the aluminium Christmas tree. Yeah, I can't even I can't
Speaker 1: believe this this really happened either, guys. These were trees
Speaker 1: made out of aluminium, a space age material that was
Speaker 1: clearly so much better than a freshly cut fir tree. However,
Speaker 1: the Christmas lights of the day, which were still incandescent
Speaker 1: bulbs in sometimes questionable wires, would get way too hot
Speaker 1: for aluminium trees. They also could potentially create an electric
Speaker 1: shock hazard because aluminum can conduct electricity. Plus, those aluminium
Speaker 1: trees had needles quote unquote made out of foil, which
Speaker 1: would easily melt. So instead of hanging electric lights on
Speaker 1: the tree, companies began to manufacture lamps that had a
Speaker 1: 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: aluminium trees became all the eight Noma would actually end
Speaker 1: up going into bankruptcy, and today it exists as a
Speaker 1: brand name. But that's about it. The era of the
Speaker 1: aluminum tree lasted about a decade, upon which time many
Speaker 1: people either went back to using the previously live trees
Speaker 1: or they switched to more natural looking artificial trees, and
Speaker 1: that meant the electric lights were back baby. However, because
Speaker 1: of the American manufacturers going out of business during the
Speaker 1: reign of aluminum Terror, the Christmas lights on the market
Speaker 1: mostly came from other countries, so America would no longer
Speaker 1: be king of the electric Christmas light all right. Now
Speaker 1: we're getting up to about nineteen seventy and the introduction
Speaker 1: of the mini light. So for a very long time,
Speaker 1: the typical Christmas light was a five or ten watt bulb,
Speaker 1: typically the size of a night light bulb, those little
Speaker 1: kind of cone shaped bulbs that I was talking about,
Speaker 1: the retro style, They were pretty big. These were the
Speaker 1: type of lights that I grew up with when I
Speaker 1: was a kid. That's the kind we had on our trees,
Speaker 1: the big, big, bright lights. I still miss those. But
Speaker 1: they drew a lot of power because the string of
Speaker 1: fifty five what bulbs means that you're consuming two fifty
Speaker 1: what's and most people were using multiple strands, like one
Speaker 1: string wouldn't do it. You might have three strands, three
Speaker 1: to five for a tree, maybe five to ten for
Speaker 1: your house. So you're consuming an enormous amount of power
Speaker 1: when you're having this stuff lit up. So the Christmas
Speaker 1: lights were greedy for electricity, then they pushed electric bills
Speaker 1: pretty high. They would also get really hot, which you
Speaker 1: know I mentioned back with the aluminium trees. Touching a
Speaker 1: bulb could give you a little bit of a minor burn,
Speaker 1: as I found out on more than one occasion when
Speaker 1: I was a kid, because I had three qualities that
Speaker 1: guaranteed I was gonna get burned. First, I was curious. Second,
Speaker 1: I was foolish or maybe stupid, and third I had
Speaker 1: a really short memory, I guess anyway, the bulbs were popular.
Speaker 1: They were colorful, but they were also wasteful and expensive.
Speaker 1: The mini light would become a popular alternative to that bulky, hot,
Speaker 1: expensive Christmas light of the past. The mini lights are,
Speaker 1: as the name implies, smaller, They only need two point
Speaker 1: five volts of electricity, and they don't get nearly as hot.
Speaker 1: Although they are still incandescent bulbs, so they still do
Speaker 1: generate heat. They're just not as hot as those larger
Speaker 1: bulbs were. It does, however, raise a question, how do
Speaker 1: you supply electricity to a two and a half volt
Speaker 1: socket if your source is an outlet that's putting out
Speaker 1: a hundred twenty volts. This is a good time to
Speaker 1: transition into a talk about circuits. So a quick reminder
Speaker 1: in electricity, voltage is sort of like water pressure in
Speaker 1: a water system. It's how hard the electricity is being
Speaker 1: pushed through. You can think of it like that. It's
Speaker 1: not exactly the same, but that's a rough analogy. It's
Speaker 1: the behind the movement of electricity, and a one volts
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 a
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 a hundred twenty volts. Problem
Speaker 1: solved now. Typically companies would actually bump that up to
Speaker 1: fifty light sockets per series, and those extra two socket
Speaker 1: would mean that each individual bulb would be slightly, maybe
Speaker 1: even imperceptibly dimmer than it would be if you only
Speaker 1: had forty eight, but it wouldn't be so dim that
Speaker 1: it would make a huge difference. So imagine a pathway
Speaker 1: from an electric outlet that goes down a line of wires,
Speaker 1: and those wires connect to fifty bulbs in series, so
Speaker 1: bulb one, the bulb two, the bulb three, etcetera. This
Speaker 1: 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 bird's out bulb
Speaker 1: and a string of fifty just wasn't fun. And it
Speaker 1: was 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 third bad bulb in
Speaker 1: that same string. It was infuriating. Now, on top of that,
Speaker 1: later electric lights would have even longer strings, like one hundred,
Speaker 1: hundred fifty or two hundred lights. Not in order to
Speaker 1: achieve this, because I was just talking about how if
Speaker 1: you put these in series it creates that greater load. Well,
Speaker 1: engineers were able to kind of cheat with this they
Speaker 1: were using both series circuits and parallel circuits for these lights. Now,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned, a series circuit strings one electric load
Speaker 1: after another along the same electrical path or circuit. So
Speaker 1: you can think of that as like one long street
Speaker 1: with houses on either side of the street, and houses
Speaker 1: represent the load on the electric circuit. So in this example,
Speaker 1: with a string that has fifty lights, think of a
Speaker 1: street and there are fifty houses twenty five on either
Speaker 1: side of the street. So to visit a house a
Speaker 1: little further down the street, you have to pass all
Speaker 1: the other ones first. Parallel circuits create multiple paths, a
Speaker 1: an independent pathway for each circuit, so different loads are
Speaker 1: on their own distinct pathways. So with a string of
Speaker 1: one fifty Christmas lights, for example, you would actually have
Speaker 1: three fifty lights series circuits. Right, So you've got one
Speaker 1: string of fifty lights in series, a second string of
Speaker 1: fifty lights in series, and a third string of fifty
Speaker 1: lights in series. But all three are then connected in
Speaker 1: parallel with each other in the street analogy, this would
Speaker 1: be like having three parallel streets that all connect to
Speaker 1: the same main road. Now, with this kind of string
Speaker 1: of lights, if un bulb were to go out, only
Speaker 1: the other bulbs in that same series circuit would go dark.
Speaker 1: So with a hundred 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 resistance,
Speaker 1: then the filament inside the lightbulb, the electricity would bypass
Speaker 1: the bulb all together 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. So
Speaker 1: electricity is going through its circuit Do do Do Do,
Speaker 1: and suddenly there's a detour. Something has made contact with
Speaker 1: the circuit that represents a lower resistance pathway. The electricity
Speaker 1: takes the lower resistance pathway. That's just nature. The electricity
Speaker 1: skips out on doing whatever it was supposed to do,
Speaker 1: like light a light bulb, and rushes down this new path. Now,
Speaker 1: at a steady voltage, This means you get a spike
Speaker 1: in current. This is because the voltage is that pressure
Speaker 1: I was talking about, and the pressure remains the same,
Speaker 1: but the reduction and electrical resistance means it's easier for
Speaker 1: electricity to flow through that part of the circuit. So
Speaker 1: the current has to increase. We expressed this mathematically by
Speaker 1: saying voltage is current times resistance, So if voltage is
Speaker 1: staying the same, it's not changing and electrical resistance is decreasing. Current,
Speaker 1: by mathematical definition, has to increase to make up the difference,
Speaker 1: and increase in current can become dangerous or even deadly. Now,
Speaker 1: because of that risk, engineers began to include fuses in
Speaker 1: Christmas lights. The fuse in a Christmas light is kind
Speaker 1: of a strip of thin wire that's near the plug
Speaker 1: end of a string of lights, the part that actually
Speaker 1: plugs into the wall. That's where the fuse is. It's
Speaker 1: rated for a certain maximum of current, and if the
Speaker 1: current increases beyond that maximum because of a short typically
Speaker 1: then this wire will actually kind of burn through and
Speaker 1: then it leaves a gap, and that gap ends up
Speaker 1: having such a high electrical resistance that electricity cannot flow
Speaker 1: through the string of lights and they all go dark.
Speaker 1: So the fuse is typically replaceable, and in these strings
Speaker 1: of lights you can even open up a little window
Speaker 1: and put in a replacement fuse if the one that
Speaker 1: you have in there has burnt out for any reason.
Speaker 1: So that is sort of a safety measure in case
Speaker 1: of a short circuit. All right, now, let's get back
Speaker 1: to the shunt. So this insulating wire that's around this
Speaker 1: this shunt typically wraps around the base of the filament
Speaker 1: in a Christmas light bulb, and because it has a
Speaker 1: higher electrical resistance than the filament does, electricity is not
Speaker 1: going to go through the shunt normally, it'll go through
Speaker 1: the filament instead. Now, if the filament begins to burn out,
Speaker 1: it starts to get really hot, and that heat is
Speaker 1: enough to melt the insulating material off of the shunt.
Speaker 1: So the bulb burns out, the shunt wire essentially sheds
Speaker 1: its insulation it's melted off. As a result, the shunt
Speaker 1: becomes a lower resistance pathway for electricity, and electricity can
Speaker 1: then pass through the light bulb socket and keep the
Speaker 1: other lights on the series lit. It means you can
Speaker 1: actually spot the burnout bulb in a string and replace it.
Speaker 1: You don't have to worry about one bulb going out
Speaker 1: and everything going out. You'll just see that one bulb
Speaker 1: burnout and you can then swap it out. Now, one
Speaker 1: other thing that can happen that can be for sustrating
Speaker 1: is that some of the strings of lights are pretty
Speaker 1: cheaply made, and the bulbs can be loose in their sockets,
Speaker 1: and if they're not making good contact with the parts
Speaker 1: of the socket where the electricity flows through, then you're
Speaker 1: not gonna get electricity flowing through the series, because it'll
Speaker 1: be like an open circuit or a circuit where the
Speaker 1: switches in the off position. So in that case, you
Speaker 1: have to go down the length of the wire and
Speaker 1: check to make sure that each bulb is plugged in
Speaker 1: properly for electricity to flow through that series of bulbs.
Speaker 1: Some Christmas lights actually put the shunt into the socket
Speaker 1: itself rather than inside the bulb, which helps side stuff
Speaker 1: that problem. So in those cases, just like with a
Speaker 1: burnt out bulb, the affected bulb would be the one
Speaker 1: that was not lit, but the rest of it should
Speaker 1: still be shining brightly. Now, when we come back, I'll
Speaker 1: talk a bit more about how the series Circuits and
Speaker 1: Christmas Lights created a headache for the electricians on the
Speaker 1: Netflix series Stranger Things, as well as a couple of
Speaker 1: other interesting facts. But first, let's take a quick break. Okay, So,
Speaker 1: in case you've not seen the series Stranger Things, let
Speaker 1: me explain why Christmas lights are important and why they
Speaker 1: posed a big challenge to the crew of that show.
Speaker 1: So in the show, there's a boy named Will Buyers
Speaker 1: who is trapped in a sort of parallel dimension and
Speaker 1: he can't interact directly with people in our dimension, but
Speaker 1: he discovers that he can affect electrical devices. The show
Speaker 1: is set in the nineteen eighties and Will comes from
Speaker 1: sort of a lower middle class family and they still
Speaker 1: have the big, bulky Christmas lights they haven't switched over
Speaker 1: to the smaller ones. And when Will's mother, Joyce, figures
Speaker 1: out that Will can affect these lights, she devises away
Speaker 1: for him to communicate with her. She labels a string
Speaker 1: of Christmas lights with letters of the alphabet, and that
Speaker 1: means Will can effectively type out messages by making individ
Speaker 1: will lights go off and on, which is a clever
Speaker 1: idea for a show. It's also not how Christmas lights work, because,
Speaker 1: as I've described in this podcast, they're supposed to all
Speaker 1: be in series and you can't turn them off and
Speaker 1: on individually because they're all in a series circuit. They're
Speaker 1: strung in such a way that turning off one means
Speaker 1: they all go off. So how did the show get
Speaker 1: around that? Well? It was surprisingly challenging. The solution was
Speaker 1: sort of straightforward, but it wasn't easy or convenient. The
Speaker 1: electrician had to wire each bulb individually to a switchboard
Speaker 1: that could supply electricity to that bulb. Now, that also
Speaker 1: meant having to control the voltage that was going to
Speaker 1: each bulb since they were no longer in series and
Speaker 1: the load wouldn't be shared across the whole wire. So
Speaker 1: you had to control the voltage to be appropriate for
Speaker 1: the individual bulbs and then isolate it from all the
Speaker 1: other bulbs. And you had to do it twenty six times,
Speaker 1: or at least however many time was needed to make
Speaker 1: sure all the letters that were being used were wired
Speaker 1: up properly. You might have been able to get away
Speaker 1: without wiring up say X or Z or some of
Speaker 1: the other letters that aren't a common The switchboard was
Speaker 1: effectively a keyboard, so you could like press the a
Speaker 1: button that would activate a switch, and the switch would
Speaker 1: open the circuit, meaning it breaks the pathway, And because
Speaker 1: it breaks the pathway, the light would go out. And
Speaker 1: 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: while 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, and who my
Speaker 1: kidding still is. The line is, now, why the hell
Speaker 1: are they all blinking? Yeah, blinking lights? Okay, there are
Speaker 1: two general ways of creating blinking Christmas lights if you're
Speaker 1: a manufacturer. One of those ways is brilliantly simple and
Speaker 1: kind of jankie. So let's go with that one first.
Speaker 1: All right, So let's say get a couple of different metals,
Speaker 1: and you create a strip using these two different metals.
Speaker 1: Maybe one side is copper and the other side is
Speaker 1: you know, iron or something. These two metals have slightly
Speaker 1: different properties, and one of the different properties they have
Speaker 1: is their rate of expansion when they get hot. Because
Speaker 1: one metal will expand faster than the other, it causes
Speaker 1: the strip to bend, it curls as one side of
Speaker 1: the strip expands faster than the other one does. These
Speaker 1: are called bimetallic strips, and they're using lots of stuff
Speaker 1: like thermostats, but thermostats are a different podcast. Alright, So
Speaker 1: you've got this bimetallic strip and you use it to
Speaker 1: make 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 these
Speaker 1: full strands are in an interleaving pattern, meaning that you
Speaker 1: don't just get all the lights in one strand followed
Speaker 1: by 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 to, 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 end up with a tree
Speaker 1: in which the first fifty lights are blinking, the next
Speaker 1: fifty lights are fading in and out, the next fifty
Speaker 1: are twinkling, etcetera. So by doing it this way, you
Speaker 1: can have that effects spread out throughout the entire string
Speaker 1: of lights, and you get a more interesting, varied effect.
Speaker 1: More recently, we've seen LED lights start to replace the
Speaker 1: old incandescent many lights. The incandescent bulbs work by feeding
Speaker 1: electricity through a filament which heats up and gives off light,
Speaker 1: but LED lights generate light in a totally different way.
Speaker 1: L E D s have electrons moving through a semiconductor material.
Speaker 1: Now I've talked about this in past episodes, and frankly,
Speaker 1: I'm running out of time in this episode, so I
Speaker 1: don't feel like I can really go into a lot
Speaker 1: of detail here about how it works, but from a
Speaker 1: sub atomic level, here's what's going on. You've got an
Speaker 1: electron inhabiting a certain energy shell around the nucleus of
Speaker 1: an atom. You pour some energy into that atom that
Speaker 1: causes the electron to jump to a higher energy shell
Speaker 1: a little further out from the atoms nucleus. But then
Speaker 1: you cut off the energy that's going into the atom,
Speaker 1: and the electrons natural state is to be closer to
Speaker 1: the nucleus. But in order to move back to where
Speaker 1: it's supposed to be at first has to give off
Speaker 1: that excess energy, which it does so by emitting the
Speaker 1: energy in the form of photons or light, and they
Speaker 1: do it in very specific frequencies, so with different semiconductors
Speaker 1: you can produce different colors of light. One nice thing
Speaker 1: about L E d s is that when an LED
Speaker 1: light fails, which typically takes a long time, LED lights
Speaker 1: tend to last much longer than incandescent lights. Anyway, the
Speaker 1: failed L E ED can still serve as a pathway
Speaker 1: for electricity to flow through, so the other lights on
Speaker 1: the string will continue to stay lit. It's more or
Speaker 1: less that like the L E ED is is in itself,
Speaker 1: acting like a shunt. Led lights, just like other Christmas lights,
Speaker 1: tend to be wired in series, and you have multiple
Speaker 1: series of lights wired in parallel on a single string.
Speaker 1: And another great thing about LED lights is that they
Speaker 1: typically require way less energy to run, so you can
Speaker 1: run them longer and for less money in the long
Speaker 1: run than you can with classic incandescent bulbs. They tend
Speaker 1: to be more expensive than incandescent bulb lights are on
Speaker 1: initial purchase, but in the long run you actually save
Speaker 1: money by using those, and you save a lot of energy.
Speaker 1: So highly recommended h and one type of bulb I
Speaker 1: didn't mention, I skipped over it, but this was a
Speaker 1: favorite of mine when I was growing up are bubble lights,
Speaker 1: which made a comeback not too long ago, but these
Speaker 1: were like common when I was a kid. These lights
Speaker 1: have a fluid with a relatively low boiling point, and
Speaker 1: it's inside of a glass tube and at the base
Speaker 1: of the tube is an incandescent bulb. So when the
Speaker 1: bulb lights up, it gives off heat. Then eventually that
Speaker 1: heat reaches the temperature sufficient to bring the liquid inside
Speaker 1: the tube to a boil, which produces bubbles inside the tube.
Speaker 1: Now we had these on our Christmas trees when I
Speaker 1: was a kid, and I thought they were super awesome.
Speaker 1: The early versions of these lights used a very lightweight
Speaker 1: oil as the liquid, but more modern versions tend to
Speaker 1: rely upon die chlora methane, which has a boiling point
Speaker 1: of thirty nine point six degrees celsius or a hundred
Speaker 1: three point three degrees fahrenheit. Oh And on the other
Speaker 1: end of the spectrum are the projector systems being used
Speaker 1: to create all sorts of effects on house exteriors, like
Speaker 1: snowfall or I don't know, an ELF strike team descending
Speaker 1: on a house. These projectors typically use LEDs to generate
Speaker 1: lasers to create the light needed for the projection. The
Speaker 1: light passes through lenses that magnify whatever images are being
Speaker 1: displayed and then shoots them up so that they appear
Speaker 1: on the side of a house. And lasers are pretty nifty.
Speaker 1: They're also super technical, and I've talked about them another episodes,
Speaker 1: so I won't go into detail here, but I wanted
Speaker 1: to mention them because it's another high tech gadget being
Speaker 1: used in holiday decorations these days. Also, um, if you
Speaker 1: have one of these things, make sure that it's pointed
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.
Speaker 1: There are other lights I can mention. They're like micro
Speaker 1: lights and mesh lights and icicle lights, but essentially all
Speaker 1: of these are variations upon the stuff I've already talked
Speaker 1: about in this episode. And then there are the Christmas
Speaker 1: light displays that synchronize the lights with the soundtrack using
Speaker 1: various micro controllers and sequencers. And maybe I'll do a
Speaker 1: 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: I hope you enjoyed that episode from two thousand nineteen
Speaker 1: on lighting up the Holidays. I hope that your own
Speaker 1: holidays have been happy, healthy and safe. I hope you're
Speaker 1: staying warm wherever you are, unless you're in Australia, in
Speaker 1: which case I hope you're staying cool. And I look
Speaker 1: forward to chatting with you again tomorrow. I should be
Speaker 1: back with more episodes about the big tech news stories
Speaker 1: of two because gosh darn it, there were just so
Speaker 1: many this past year. And let me know what else
Speaker 1: you would like me to chat about in three by
Speaker 1: reaching out on Twitter. The handle for the show is
Speaker 1: tech Stuff h s W. Or you can download the
Speaker 1: i Heart Radio app for free and navigate on over
Speaker 1: to tech Stuff using that little search field and use
Speaker 1: the little microphone icon to leave me a voice message
Speaker 1: up to thirty seconds in length and tell me there
Speaker 1: and until then, I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff is an I heart Radio production. For more
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