The vintage in-situ photo others have posted have a sign which lists lighting times! Probably wouldn’t get away with that nowadays, damn ’elf n safety :sunglasses:
312A to run at 240
edison may have designed it to run directly off some crazy generator just for that
though the DC generators usually are not very high
would need to be 750 V to make it 100A
that might have worked
This link from Cleveland Historical includes a photo taken in 1954 showing it powered up. It’s obviously not running at full power though. Or their definition of “75,000” watts isn’t what I’d expect.
My first thought is Moon Tower. Moon Towers were already enough of a crackpot idea that surely someone had the even more crackpot idea for an Uber Moon Tower.
re that youtube video:
A 20kW light at full power would instantly blind a person nearby, even burn hair an skin within seconds.
Even closed eyelids would pass enough light to destroy the retina.
That not to mention the risk of the bulb exploding.
The 20kW bulb outdoors (!) seen in the video is a really dangerous experiment. Imagine a slight breeze hitting the hot glass.
Normally, these strong halogen bulbs are embedded in lights that have proper thermal management to avoid cooling shocks to the bulb.
I’m looking again at the photos of the 75kW bulb… I think it’s actually only two connections (brass posts at the base) and the rest of the bits are simply supports (middle lower support is into glass)… so although there are 4 filiments, it looks like they’re in series?
2.4mil lumens divided by 75kw = 32lm/W, which isn’t great but not actually that terrible, especially for the time it was produced.