Christmas lights of yesteryear

pirate · Dec 13, 2020

A neighbour called on me today clutching a carrier bag...
Could you look at my Christmas lights please, they aren't working?
I took the bag and dug out a set of lights about 48 in all, all wired onto some green coloured bell-wire, terminating in a 13A plug.
many of you will remember these! A bulb goes out, you short the holder with tinfoil, and all is fine. This string had several areas wrapped in black tape, where bulb-holders had been cut out and the wires twisted together. The plug was of an age whereby the L and N pins had no partial insulation (a decent quality plug by MK actually) ( I believe some call it a plug-top?!) and there was no cord grip, and the screw that holds the plug-top to the plug-bottom (trying to please everybody here!) was missing, but the sellotape was doing a great job...
I told her that there was only one place for this string and that was the bin. She then revealed that she always used these to brighten up the communal stairwell in her block of flats, by wrapping them round the iron railings on the stair, but if I didn't like them she would bin them. She then asked me to check the other set she had already put on the stairs, so off i went. Same story, the only difference was that the plug had the cardboard label on it. The plug was plugged into a socket in the meter cupboard on the ground floor with the flex jammed under the door on top of the carpet in the hall, so you couldn't shut the door properly and the string was neatly, artistically entwined round the metal railings. She binned them too. However, having been brought up with stuff just like that, I can't remember many people dying over christmas from such a set-up.
She did tell me later that she had tested the first set the night before and most of the bulbs lit up ok, but the flex got quite warm...

SJD · Dec 13, 2020

I have a similar old set, some of the lamps are unusual decorative ones such as a painted glass Father Christmas, or a pumpkin, etc. With lovely single insulated green cable. Not actually using them, but can't bring myself to throw them away, they always went on the tree some 50 plus years ago, and we always had trouble with loose lamps stopping the whole set working.

pirate · Dec 13, 2020

remember some of the bulbs had a white spot on them, and these were fused bulbs...usually replaced them with normal ones due to nuisance tripping...

Dustydazzler · Dec 13, 2020

£1.99 for a 50 string of Christmas lights from Woolworths

them were the days

DPG · Dec 14, 2020

Old Christmas lights (and decorations) are quite collectable. Always check ebay prices before chucking them away (not the sets that Pirate's neighbour has though obviously!).

littlespark · Dec 14, 2020

Guess what I was doing last night?

Trying to get a old set like that to light up on our second tree.
22 years old lights, same as the tree. Our “traditional” decorated tree, bought for our first house, the year we got married.
Warm white, static. None of this flashing malarkey.
I think there’s only 20 bulbs on it, and still got the white fuse bulb.

This is also the tree that swallows baubles. Every year one goes missing. It doesn’t fall off, it doesn’t get broken.... it’s just one less than we had the year before.

Lucien Nunes · Dec 14, 2020

A bulb goes out, you short the holder with tinfoil, and all is fine.

You shouldn't need to do that. Normal Xmas tree lamps have a shorting mechanism inside the lamp itself. If the filament fails, the wire loop around the supports shorts them together to restore continuity. The white-tipped 'fuse lamp' is a normal lamp without the shorting mechanism, the lamp itself serves as the fuse. It's needed to stop a runaway situation where the loss of voltage drop from a failed lamp that shorts itself out triggers another failure, which further increases the overvoltage at each lamp etc. Without the fuse lamp once you've lost a few the remainder all fail and the last few to go explode.

pirate · Dec 14, 2020

I think it's infinitely preferable to have LED lighting sets now! I was never happy with mains voltage looping around and over a tree.
I remember my father making a set of outside christmas lights using coloured "pygmy" bulbs (I apologise if that is a non-PC term). basically, there were a couple of dozen of them, and they plugged into bayonet holders. The holders themselves were in 2 parts. the bottom part had a channel with 2 sharp brass prongs set apart just the right distance to pierce a T&E cable. You laid the cable in the channel, over the prongs, then screwed the top half down on top, squeezing the cable tightly, then the prongs penetrated the outer sheath and inner insulation. Not sure if such fittings are available nowadays....anyway, they lasted for years, and I only threw that set away a few years ago, so they had lasted for at least 50 years, albeit only being brought out at christmas. One advantage was that they seldom needed replacement lamps, despite being used outside, on top of the garage, in all weathers.

pirate · Dec 14, 2020

Something like this:

Lampholder for festoon cable, self assembly - festoon lighting lampholder | eBay

Lampholder for decorative braided festoon lighting string can be wired to your preferred bulb spacing. Price is per lampholder. The festoon bulbholder works by piercing the cable at your required distance.

www.ebay.co.uk

DPG · Dec 14, 2020

Lucien Nunes said:
You shouldn't need to do that. Normal Xmas tree lamps have a shorting mechanism inside the lamp itself. If the filament fails, the wire loop around the supports shorts them together to restore continuity. The white-tipped 'fuse lamp' is a normal lamp without the shorting mechanism, the lamp itself serves as the fuse. It's needed to stop a runaway situation where the loss of voltage drop from a failed lamp that shorts itself out triggers another failure, which further increases the overvoltage at each lamp etc. Without the fuse lamp once you've lost a few the remainder all fail and the last few to go explode.

That's comparatively modern though. 1970s or perhaps 1980s onwards maybe? I remember sets from the 1970s where once a lamp had gone, it was open circuit and you had to find out which one it was.

littlespark · Dec 14, 2020

I remember in the 80s going along the string looking for the broken filament... no shorting mechanism.
I had better eyes than my dad and could see the broken one.
Easy when there’s only 2 dozen bulbs to try, not so nowadays if you had to check upwards of 200 on a string of LED.

Lucien Nunes · Dec 14, 2020

We had 20- and 40-light strings that were already some years old when I remember them in the mid-70's, with LES holders, for which the lamps always had the shorting link. I think it might have come in around the same time as the change from MES to LES caps, perhaps late 60's? The older MES lamps in novelty shapes are very collectable now.

The holders themselves were in 2 parts. the bottom part had a channel with 2 sharp brass prongs set apart just the right distance to pierce a T&E cable. You laid the cable in the channel, over the prongs, then screwed the top half down on top, squeezing the cable tightly, then the prongs penetrated the outer sheath and inner insulation. Not sure if such fittings are available nowadays

The leading brand of cable-piercing festoon holder was 'Beeantee' - they are still made although IIRC by a different firm. The cable looks like T+E but it's a purpose-made 2-core 2.5mm² stranded festoon cable. see:
Festoon holders from David Rose Lighting

lozarus · Dec 14, 2020

pirate said:
I remember my father making a set of outside christmas lights using coloured "pygmy" bulbs (I apologise if that is a non-PC term). basically, there were a couple of dozen of them, and they plugged into bayonet holders. The holders themselves were in 2 parts. the bottom part had a channel with 2 sharp brass prongs set apart just the right distance to pierce a T&E cable.

I came cross one of these exact items before. I understand they're still available - I imagine they may be a fit once, non removable variant though - and are used by manufacturers of festooon lighting. designed for use with proprietary festoon cabling.

The ones you describe are still evident under the canopies of a few shops in my town, made exactly as you describe, screwed into lengths of T&E, with various attempts at connecting them up to the mains by shopkeepers of yesteryear. Only one set actually still seem to be in use.

OnlQQker · Dec 14, 2020

pirate said:
A neighbour called on me today clutching a carrier bag...
Could you look at my Christmas lights please, they aren't working?
I took the bag and dug out a set of lights about 48 in all, all wired onto some green coloured bell-wire, terminating in a 13A plug.
many of you will remember these! A bulb goes out, you short the holder with tinfoil, and all is fine. This string had several areas wrapped in black tape, where bulb-holders had been cut out and the wires twisted together. The plug was of an age whereby the L and N pins had no partial insulation (a decent quality plug by MK actually) ( I believe some call it a plug-top?!) and there was no cord grip, and the screw that holds the plug-top to the plug-bottom (trying to please everybody here!) was missing, but the sellotape was doing a great job...
I told her that there was only one place for this string and that was the bin. She then revealed that she always used these to brighten up the communal stairwell in her block of flats, by wrapping them round the iron railings on the stair, but if I didn't like them she would bin them. She then asked me to check the other set she had already put on the stairs, so off i went. Same story, the only difference was that the plug had the cardboard label on it. The plug was plugged into a socket in the meter cupboard on the ground floor with the flex jammed under the door on top of the carpet in the hall, so you couldn't shut the door properly and the string was neatly, artistically entwined round the metal railings. She binned them too. However, having been brought up with stuff just like that, I can't remember many people dying over christmas from such a set-up.
She did tell me later that she had tested the first set the night before and most of the bulbs lit up ok, but the flex got quite warm...