Mechanical light bulb from 1675 [video]

For those who want to read the wiki article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barometric_light

I wish I could just buy one of these as a commercial product. I'll never be able to make this and it's too cool to not be able to buy.

If you've never seen neon up close, plasma is such an incredible light source. It's like the light is just floating being emitted from empty space. I took a neon workshop a few years ago, and it became clear why people are still willing to painstakingly make these signs - there is really nothing comparable to them, they're like magic

I wish these could be made with something non toxic. Having one on my desk to shake would be a great fidget spinner.

for a moment I thought this was going to be about arc-lights in the 1800s that mechanically touch electrodes and then draw apart

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arc_lamp

it's amazing how far we've come

think about Benjamin Franklin twenty-five years before Declaration of Independence naming the first "battery" (out of the concept of lined-up artillery) by connecting a series of lynden jars (basically capacitors) - he also invented the concept of +/- positive and negative

now we've got space telescopes and probes leaving the solar system

imagine what's coming in another 300 years