Re: [Rollei] Maybe OT - What's the oldest?

[TrueBadger]

It doesn't meet the specified criteria for the oldest photo item because I didn't buy it, but I have a red bulb with a carbon filament that I used for a safelight when I first set up a darkroom in my teens.

It's true red ruby glass, not painted or coated with some plastic of flashed-on surface coat, and is about the size of a modern 40 watt bulb and has the same shape.  There's no make on it.

I never bought it. My family had it, although I've no idea why, since no one prior to myself ever did any darkroom work. I found it in amongst the family junk and put it to use as a safelight down in the fruit cellar (an archaic term) where I'd set up my second-hand federal enlarger on an old kitchen table.

The bulb has to be a minimum of sixty years old, and still works fine.  Carbon filament bulbs seem never to burn out. I no longer use it, but keep it nonetheless, and every few years I scew it into a socket and confirm that it still lights.  So far, it always has.

G. King

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