On Mon, 27 Jan 2014 14:35:48 -0600, wrote:

On Mon, 27 Jan 2014 10:42:01 -0500, "Ralph Mowery"
wrote:


wrote in message
. ..

Those cheap neon testers will light from any source if there is power,
and the box ground is common for testing. I seriously can not imagine
one of them starting a fire, no matter how they are grounded.
I have not seen them in the stores for years, but I have not looked for
one either. Today they are probably LEDs. Those neons did tend to burn
out after several years. I guess the gas inside them just vaporizes or
something.


I don't think the bulb would ever burn out or seldom go bad. Most neon
bulbs are rated for many thousands of on hours. As most tests only take a
few seconds, it would take many years for the bulb to go bad.

At work there were many of us that had them and most of the ones that went
bad were because of physical damage. They were used on voltages up to 480
volts..


I'm not talking about the testers going bad, but neons that are left on
for long periods of time. I had a neon night light, which after some
years, just quit working. It would flicker on at times, but not stay
lit. Oddly enough, it seemed to flicker only when I turned the room
light on. That makes little sense to me, but thats what it did.

Older neon lamps used a radioactive starter (a spot of Radium paint,
for example) to the gas to get them to reliably start. When that
decays, the light becomes harder to start. It may become light
sensitive, too (only lights when there is light in the room).