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Old 07-24-2018, 04:58 PM
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AdamAnt316 AdamAnt316 is offline
Collector of heavy things
 
Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: MA
Posts: 140
I remember seeing fluorescent lighting at gas stations when I was growing up, but not so much as street lighting. At least one former gas station (now a body shop) still turns on their fluorescent lights at night. One current gas station lit theirs for a year or so, but didn't bother to turn it off during the day! It's been off ever since; not sure if the tubes/ballast failed, or if they just don't bother anymore.

Up until the early-mid '90s, my town used mercury vapor street lighting. We lived on a small private road, and still had an incandescent streetlight. Around the time the town converted their streetlights to sodium vapor, they took down our streetlight, and didn't replace it for a few years, upon which they replaced it with a sodium vapor one which is still there.

A few years ago, I found an American Electric street light head in a trash pile across the street from my house. It's equipped with a 100W GE mercury vapor bulb, and a ballast coil of some sort. I'm not sure how to wire it up; I tried connecting a 120V cheater cord to its terminals, but no dice. Guessing it needs 240 or 277V, but I have no real idea how I'd accommodate it in that regard. Here are some pictures of it:


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