Thorn Alpha 9
The Thorn Alpha 9 deep bowl lantern, instantly recognisable due to its huge bowl and wafer thin canopy, it had been a good seller for the company for years. Starting life under the Atlas brand, it was redesigned later in life, bringing down its size considerably, taking advantage of the the smaller ballasts, and omitting the protruding spigot to clean the overall appearance up. 

The example seen here was originally installed in Scotland, and was very kindly given to me by a collector in 2014, who had finished up collecting. It arrived in immaculate condition, and took me all of half an hour to completely restore the it back to factory fresh condition. Needless to say, it now lives in my loft, away from potential damage.

Thorn Alpha 9

The Thorn Alpha 9 deep bowl lantern, instantly recognisable due to its huge bowl and wafer thin canopy, it had been a good seller for the company for years. Starting life under the Atlas brand, it was redesigned later in life, bringing down its size considerably, taking advantage of the the smaller ballasts, and omitting the protruding spigot to clean the overall appearance up.

The example seen here was originally installed in Scotland, and was very kindly given to me by a collector in 2014, who had finished up collecting. It arrived in immaculate condition, and took me all of half an hour to completely restore the it back to factory fresh condition. Needless to say, it now lives in my loft, away from potential damage.

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Date added:09 Mar, 2019
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Comment 1 to 5 of 5
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thorncollector   [09 Mar, 2019 at 06:32 PM]
did it come from me? can't remember
oliver   [09 Mar, 2019 at 06:47 PM]
The diffuser look great!
lampy   [09 Mar, 2019 at 08:10 PM]
the bowls on these are wafer thin, infact lieing one on its side like this on a hard surface dents in the underside of the bowl the lantern is so heavy, best to lay it on a bit of carpet or mount the fitting on a bracket up your loft to avoid it getting broke
AngryHorse   [09 Mar, 2019 at 09:11 PM]
Makes you wonder what the obsession was with HUGE bowls on low pressure sodium lanterns, surly putting autoleaks ‘in lantern’ wasn’t the real reason for this?
Dave   [09 Mar, 2019 at 10:57 PM]
The lantern came from a ex collector from the scottish borders. Its now stored in my loft on its back to prevent undue weight from being on the bowl. I think its just the design of the lantern where the ballast had to be directly above the lamp that meant they had to have these huge bowls, its purely down to design. The likes of the Eleco GR102 featured an autoleak ballast behind the lamp, meaning a standard gearless bowl could be used. The autoleak ballast really did play a part in the size of the lantern, a great example being the early deep base of the Thorn Gamma 6. made specially for these huge ballasts of the time.

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