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Osram GEC 200W 24V 8.33A Runway-Airport lighting vintage halogen lamps
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these where a fun journey of discovery
I had first become aware of this general type of lamp from sailormoon_01_uk's uploads way back in the day, and I always thought they where neat, because of how they where a baby double-jacketed halogen lamp with a still regular E27 base, and fairly standard voltage of 24V, like a baby IODE type lamp if you will, most airport/specialist lamps like this tend to be weird voltages-wattages-bases, but these so just so happen to actually be somewhat "standard" :)
so I thought would be cool to get an example for the collection someday, fast forward many years and I find a listing for someone selling a bunch of nice early second generation Philips SL Opal lamps, but its about a 200 mile round trip to pick them up, but I also see the same seller has these halogens for sale, so I thought sure, good enough for me and I make the trip, pick up the SL lamps, these Halogens and a whole bunch of other weird industrial application lightbulbs he happened to have and just want rid of.
now I sat down with these and looked at them and thought, hmm they look a bit interesting-old looking with the "Osram" rather then GEC etches, in Straw colour and old style looking quartz construction with many airlines (they look a lot like GEC 80W Mercury arc tubes!), and so I ran the Date code of WH (WG on one) and got back either August (July) 1965 or 1989 and I thought hmmmm these must be 1989, 1965 would very early for a Halogen lamp and figured they just happened to be a bit old looking, and the fact they are Osram Branding being because 1989 was after GEC's lighting devision was taken over by Osram GmbH (from the 1960's-1980's apart from their consumer lamps, GEC tended to brand their light bulbs "GEC" rather than "Osram", so if you come across a British lamp branded "Osram" thats not a consumer lamp, its either from the 1960's or older or after the mid 1980's)
anyways, I happened to be talking to James and I show him that I found these, and he got very excited, for he told me, actually looking at the construction/style they might well be from 1965! as they are the sister lamp to the very first Halogen lamp type made in Europe (the first type being the 6.6A 30V version with a P28s cap)
so this got me thinking and did some digging, remember above I had been wanting one of these types for a long while, so I knew of a long standing eBay listing for these which I knew for a fact contained lamps from the late 1980's so I pulled that up,
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/234336194430
and sure enough as you can see from the eBay listing, the design of the lamp from the late 1980's is quite different to what I have here! however there was one more litmus test as to their vintage and that was to light one, and see what colour it turned after turning it back off, for only the oldest halogen lamps had an iodide fill, and this fill turns purple when hot and vaporised, and sure enough, I got purple :)
which all confirms these are actually much older then I first realised! they are my first Halogen lamps from the 1960's something I am most pleased to have, and all the more pleased I did decided to go grab them in the end :) (as in general I have also always wanted a nice 1960's Halogen lamp, but as you can imagine 1960's halogen lamps are not very common!)
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