"Nightjar" wrote in message
news
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.

Colin Bignell



You miss my point. He said that it hung there by electromagnet when it was
plugged in, and no electromagnet strong enough to hold a small parking
light, is going to be down at 5 watts on its consumption. And even if it
was, that, plus the 5 watts of the bulb, would still be the better part of
one amp, and given the small size and lack of sophistication of car
batteries back then, and the fact that they were charged by a dynamo barely
adequate for the job, I would think that a 14 hour (6pm until 8am) overnight
operation of such a light, would leave the battery seriously depleted.

I would imagine that it was actually a permanent magnet. In fact, I've a
vague recollection of owning one - although it might have been an
over-the-window one ...

Arfa