Richard's cold florescent light.

[Tom Deering <tmd@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 10/25/99, Richard Rylander wrote:

>The backlight is completely self-contained including 4 AA batteries
>behind the reflector/lamp assembly (this just lifts out for access).
>It attaches to the Saturn viewer via four thumbscrews (making use of
>the existing holes in the semicircle wings that used to hold a curved
>diffuser).  Just unscrew the backlight and place a piece of diffusing
>acrylic over the open end to convert it to a light pad (normally
>diffusion is provided by the acrylic attached to the back of the
>viewer - I left this in place so that the viewer may still be used in
>"steal-the-light" mode).


This is such a sweet design, Richard.  Your pictures on Greg Erker's 
web site are excellent.  This is exactly what I have in mind.

Looking at the photos, I recognize these lamps as the illumination 
source for a laptop computer screen.  I have a couple of these bad 
boys lying around here somewhere.  They look like a swizzle stick 
made of white glass.  I wondered what powered them!  I'll get the 
inverter and see if I can spark one up.

My wife just mentioned last night what a good slide illuminator my laptop was.
<forehead slap>

THANKS!

Tom