Sam Goldwasser wrote:
Stanislaw Flatto writes:

A 'toy' that we enjoyed for few years disintegrated and we would like to
replace it.
It was a table lamp, but the bulb included a cicuitry sensing the timing
of power switch on-off operations and a dimmer.
When the switch was operated the bulb would produce full brightness, if
the switch was thrown on-off-on within ~ 1-1.5 seconds the bulb would
enter the dimmed condition.
When the bulb failed we thought that it means just buying a replacement.
No chance!!!
So who has some info on this kind of bulb, like who is the producer and
so on.

A company (Philips maybe?) used to sell these types of bulbs. They have
the circuitry built into the base - it's a button in series with the AC.
The ones I recall had 3 or 4 levels of brightness based on repeated
switch on/off cycles as you describe.

I haven't seen them in years.

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Menards in the midwest sold those bulbs until a couple of years ago. I
still have a couple.
But, there is something even better out. It is a light dimmer that
responds to touch of any metal part of a lamp. The first time you
touch any metal part of the lamp, it glows diml;y. Touch it again and
it is about 70% of full on, touch it a third time and full brightrness,
touch once more and it goes off. The box to do this is about half the
size of a regular pack of cigarettes and can be placed into the base of
almost any lamp. These touch modules are sold in the sections of
hardware stores where they sell the electrical parts to rewire lamps.
I put one in my wife's dressing table lamp so she does not have to try
to turn a swich with wet nail polish/makeup, etc. just barely touch any
metal part of the lamp to control it. The modules are under $10.00 and
they have the added feature of coming on dim first so the filament
almost never burns out due to turn-on surtge.

H. R. (Bob) Hofmann