What an amazing lamp! I have never seen this method of starting before. I always thought these just used FEC for starting!

No, Andy, the thermal and the glow bottle interrupters were used too

It's good to be constantly learning new things! That's what I enjoy about lamps and lighting. If you know where I can find a lower wattage lamp such as 220W with this starting method I would be very interested to get one.

Oooh this is a nice old one! esp going by that white etch! always awesome to see these! I think these where some of the few if not the only 1Kw~ Sodium lamps to be made in a BT56 bulb id love to get one at some point!, you can find them and lower wattage ones quite often in the US and Australia so worth keeping an eye on ebay there arcblue on LG has a video of one of these older EYE tungsten thermal snap start lamps starting in 220W Form in his Gallery for those curious to see one of these in operation

I had the both lamps -- 220 and 360 watts. Maybe I will post them later. But that lamps have a glow bottle interrupter therefore this lamp with the heater is more interesting

I think it is just a thermal starter that use tungsten filaments. After turning on, the filaments lights up, heating the bi-metal which opens and the lamp strikes.