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1993 Fisher Pierce Electromagnetic Photocell Here's a Fisher Pierce 6690B from May 1993. It's blue but has dry-rotted to a white color with just a hint of blue. This one was a dayburner so I opened it up and replaced the eye and it works once again, though the contacts chatter/arc a lot at "sunrise", so this wouldn't be suitable for a CWA/CWI ballast (could stress out the capacitor) but should be fine with a capacitor-less ballast like reactor or HX and would be fine with incandescent. Keywords: Gear

1993 Fisher Pierce Electromagnetic Photocell

Here's a Fisher Pierce 6690B from May 1993. It's blue but has dry-rotted to a white color with just a hint of blue.

This one was a dayburner so I opened it up and replaced the eye and it works once again, though the contacts chatter/arc a lot at "sunrise", so this wouldn't be suitable for a CWA/CWI ballast (could stress out the capacitor) but should be fine with a capacitor-less ballast like reactor or HX and would be fine with incandescent.

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File information
Filename:011817_002.JPG
Album name:Mike / My Photocells
Keywords:Gear
Filesize:301 KiB
Date added:Jan 18, 2017
Dimensions:2048 x 1536 pixels
Displayed:198 times
URL:http://www.galleryoflights.org/mb/gallery/displayimage.php?pid=21385
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GEsoftwhite100watts   [Jan 19, 2017 at 09:02 PM]
This, but in gray, from the same year, is what's on my '93-ish ElectriPak area light I've had since I was 13. Not the most light sensitive thing, that's for sure! It could be under an eve in broad daylight and wouldn't turn off unless the sun was hitting that wall, and indoors in a room mounted on a wall where it currently is other ambient light in the room won't turn it off, much less its own light reflected on white walls/ceiling.
streetlight98   [Jan 20, 2017 at 01:54 AM]
Yeah these things loose sensitivity over time. Basically the normal mode of failure is that it gets less and less sensitive until it essentially becomes "blind". You'll hear the relay buzz a little when a bright light is shined at the window but no amount of light will be enough to open the contacts. That was the case with this one so I replaced the CdS cell that faces out the window with another I had and it works again!
GEsoftwhite100watts   [Jan 20, 2017 at 05:24 AM]
This light spent 18 years with a taped over photocell and under an overhang, most of those years disconnected completely from power, just hanging there. Only when I got it did the photocell really ever see the light of day. Even the original lamp it came with, a Philips "Rattler" ED28 but still with the Lifeguard arc tube, only had just a little bit of whitening at the ends of the arc tube...probably maybe a couple hundred hours at most, ever, until I got it? It's much more worn now but I have a /DX lamp in it now instead anyway. But it's still rarely used, it goes for months without being turned on frequently!

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