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Photographs and Demonstrations of Antique Electric Lights Won in Ebay Auctions Electric light images below lead to the rest of the stories on the electric carbon arc lights acquired on Ebay:
 Larry Brian Radka, the architect of this website, acquired from an Ebay auction the Graybar Sunshine Carbon Arc Health Lamp portrayed in the photographs above and below. It measures about 19 inches in height and 14 inches in width, and The Saturday Evening Post's 1930 advertisement of this beautiful electric lamp sets forth some of its other features below: . . .  Above is a close-up picture of the clock mechanism inside the box with the windup key on the side of the arc light illustrated above. It drives the chains that keep the carbons continuously separated at the proper distance to maintain the arc. Note the beads used for insulating the wire. This was probably the first type of insulation ever used for electrical wiring, at the dawn of modern electrical practice in the eighteenth century as well as in antiquity. . . .  An Antique Ebay Carbon Arc Light from Karlova University A rare incandescent* Ebay Carbon Arc Light purchase is illustrated in the animation above. It is spring-loaded to maintain a gap between its carbons after "striking its arc," or momentarily touching its two electrified carbons toegether to initiate its blaze. A locking lever at its base maintains in place a wheel with two-degree separations in its teeth. The light may have been used in the mathematics department to demonstrate points on the circumference of a circle and probably as a light source by the Physics faculty? I do not know its age, but I suspect it is a nineteenth-century variety because of the large beads that are used to insulate its wiring tied to the carbon holders. Using beads is a very old method of insulating wires, which the following illustration of the artwork in the ancient Egyptian temple at Denderah** seems to demonstrate. Beads appear to be employed on the four connections running from an apparent battery on the far left to the four electric filament lamps behind the goddess Isis in the center. . . .
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