Nightjar :
On 23/05/2013 01:27, Arfa Daily wrote:


"charles" wrote in message
...
In article , Nightjar
wrote:
...
In the legislation they are called position lights, a name that probably
dates back to when you could have the headlights close together, as in
Mk1 Land Rovers. To anybody in the habit of using them by themselves in
a built-up area, once a common practice, a parking light probably means
a single bulb lamp, showing white in one direction and red in the other,
that you clipped over the top of the door window when parking at night.

my father's one had an electromagnet, so it stuck to the side of teh car
when plugged in.


And the battery wasn't flat in the morning ... ?

That was the point of having a single 5 watt bulb. You could run that
off a battery for a couple of nights and still have a good chance of
starting the car, even with the measly batteries used in the 1950s and
dynamo charging.

I modified one by adding a light-level detector so that the bulb stopped
drawing current at dawn. That was advanced technology back then.

But I take Arfa's point about the electromagnet. The usual method was to
jam the parking light in place with the window. I can't see why you'd
want the extra current drain of an electromagnet, and presumably a
tendency to fall off when the battery inevitably ran down.

--
Mike Barnes