Christmas lights

[frhrwa]

when I was a kid, they sold the miniature Christmas lights that individually flashed. They were twinkle lights and each one was its own light bulb, not part of the series circuit... you take one out, they all stay on! What ever happened to them, or does anyone know where they can be purchased?

[Chris Smith]

We moved all of our production and manufacturing over seas. Good luck?

[Michael Kaudze]

Try going to this page link:http://www.twinklebulbs.com/history.htm<p>might be of some help.

[frhrwa]

well, I guess thats twinklebulbs also, but.... not the twinklebulbs I was remembering.. these are the smallest christmas lights, like the ones in the icycle sets.. each one individually twinkled, each one was its own bulb like a house light bulb.. except of course they were bayonet with the two little wires.. kind of like the twinkle bulb you put in a string today to make the whole string flash, except this was a whole string of nothing but twinklers..

[jollyrgr]

Wayne,<p>I think I know the lights you are talking about. There were two types of bulbs in the string, ordinary steady burning lights and dual filament flasher lights. The type of bulb alternated every other socket.<p>The dual filament bulbs (or glowing filament and resistor wire???) flashed on and off real quick but the entire string never went out because of the secondary filament (or resistor) in the bulb. The brighter of the two filaments in the twinkle bulb was in parallel with a second filament/resistor within the same glass envelope. The normal bulbs pulsated ever so gently between brightness levels depending on the series circuit current level of the flashing/twinkling bulbs that were lit/not lit.<p>I have not seen these in stores in years; and yes I have looked. There are several stores that specialize in Christmas themes in my area and they don't carry them. They are available on the web from several sites. Such as:<p>http://www.christmasespast.com/chrislig50tw.html<p>The price ($13!!!) on the web is more than I'm willing to pay for a set of lights. I buy dozens of sets on Christmas Eve/After Christmas for about half a buck for strings of 100. <p>If I could locate these locally I would still be using them.<p>You mentioned something in your original post that got me thinking. If you put a flasher bulb in parallel with every other socket, you could probably achieve a similar effect. What I'm thinking is put a socket with a flashing bulb in parallel with every other bulb. Thus the string stays lit but you get a whole bunch of flashing bulbs. Another thing you could do is add a resistor to every other socket and put a flasher in the socket with the resistor. Thus the flasher bulb would flash on and off in every other socket but the resistor in parallel would keep the rest of the string lit. There is one drawback, though. I only see flasher bulbs in clear or clear with a red tip. <p>In any case if you do add the second parallel socket, you could splice it such that it was placed in the blank area between steady bulbs.

[Rick]

Hobby shops carry "Glass Paint" that can be used to change the color of the white bulbs.

[Gary]

Seems like I had a set ten years or so ago and they stopped making them fairly quickly. I think the set I had was supposed to be low voltage, and all the bulbs flashed randomly. May have been a mixture of series and parallel circuit.<p>It worked okay for a while, but as the bulbs flashed randomly, there was the rare chance, that eventually happens, that only one bulb will be on and the rest of the string off. That bulb then sees a higher voltage than it is rated for and burns itself out quickly.

[frhrwa]

I know the lights your talking about that flash every other bulb, that's real close, but the ones I'm referring to flashed individually... they were each individual flasher bulbs, all colors... but clear would be perfectly fine... may try that idea of a parallel socket in every other space with a flasher bulb to see how it worked.. thanks

[Gary]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr>I know the lights your talking about that flash every other bulb, that's real close...<hr></blockquote><p>That's not what I ment. I ment that each bulb was fully independently flashing. Am not sure of the facts, but it seemed that there were maybe two lines of small bulbs, maybe ten or twenty each line, 3 or 6 volts approximatly.

[jollyrgr]

Yes, the set I'm talking about flashed every other bulb independently. Not half a string going out at a time. The bulbs that were not flashers did brighten/dim depending on how many of the twinkler bulbs were lit at a time. The strings I had were normal light strings, pull one bulb and the entire string went out. But the way the set was configured half the string had the twinkle lights, half the string had normal lights. They alternated every other bulb. If you held two of the twinkle lights next to each other they flashed at different rates. It was not as if half the string blinked out at once. Some bulbs may have flashed as fast as 40 times a minute. Others flashed much faster, still others slower. This was a real neat effect on a Christmas tree.

[frhrwa]

I guess maybe I'll have to bite the bullet and just spend the money to make a real nice, dependable set of flashing diode Christmas lights.. then I basically have a lifetime re-usable set for the tree.. ? to bad it would be so expensive, might just be a marketable item..