Friday, September 26, 2014

From Hal Guyon #3


8 comments:

Chic Silber said...


Shown in the open wagon up front

are 2 (I can tell by the yokes)

General Electric 60" WW 2 anti

aircraft searchlights that had

160 amp DC carbon arc sources

At 1 time I owned 5 made by the

Sperry Gyroscope Co & 1 by GE

The Sperrys were much better

Chic Silber said...


There were 8000 of these lights

built between 1937 & 1943 & were

rendered useless in the tracking

of enemy aircraft with the advent

of jet powered planes & most of

them were dumped in the ocean

after the war ended & the rest

of them became publicity units

Very few of them remain today

(6K were GE & 2K were Sperry)

Chic Silber said...


Each of the lights was powered by

it's own generator set using a

Hercules JXD flat head 6 engine

driving a Westinghouse or a GE

genny depending on which light

The 24" rotating uncoated positve

carbon fed throught the center

of the Rhodium reflector & the

smaller coated negative came up

to meet it up front at an angle

A pair would burn about an hour

That's a generator up front in

the wagon another was in back

Chic Silber said...


That's ten cents worth of my

my "knickel knowledge"

Hal Guyon said...

Chic, There`s one still here in Columbia SC. It`s mounted on a trailer and parked behind a electrical company on Millwood Ave. I`ve never seen it in operation and it`s in terrible shape. I`ll try and get some pictures of it.

Chic Silber said...

Thanks Hal but don't bother on my

account as I had my share of them

long long ago & I know there are

still a few around but some 30

or more years ago Sky Tracker

came out with a 4 headed Xenon

cam action rotating unit & has

been copied by several others

that put out about an eighth of

the illumination the 60" units

did at 800 million candlepower

These are "plug & play" devices

that don't require any knowledge

The old 60" Rhodium reflectors

have some severe value as scrap

Chic Silber said...


I would guess Hal that the unit

in Columbia is long past repair

We had to manufacture many of

the parts to keep ours operating

more than 30 years ago

Chic Silber said...


Well it seems I lied about the

position of the carbons as now

I remember that the positive

fed through a metal donut in the

center of the glass front & the

negative came up from behind

(the reflector had no hole)

Sorry for those taking notes