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Not to sound trite, but you must always read the instructions on your individual lamp. Generally, manufacturers recommend leaving them on for a maximum of eight hours. After that, they should be allowed to completely cool and resettle. Aside from anything else, this will undoubtedly prolong the life of your lamp. The LAVA brand originally called their liquid motion lamp the “Astro” lamp. Its named was changed in 1965. FAQ This is where what Katzel calls the “lava magic” comes in. Usually, since wax is less dense than water, it would simply sit on top of it. In lava lamps, however, the water-based liquid is mixed with a secret combination of chemicals that give it a similar density to the wax.
A. If a liquid motion lamp is used properly, it is very safe to use. The lamp can get hot during use, though, so it shouldn’t be handled when it’s illuminated. In addition, if you expose the lamp to extreme heat, it could explode, so keep it away from the stove, heaters, open flames, and any other heat sources. Lava lamps on the set of Dr Who and the Daleks starring Peter Cushing in 1965. Photograph: Mary Evans/StudioCanalFilms/Alamy
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The more you use a motion lamp, the shorter the warm-up time will be, so it’s a good idea to turn it on daily when you first buy it. The idea had its origins in British accountant Edward Craven-Walker's visit to a pub in Dorset. The pub used a device employing two liquids of unequal density as a rudimentary egg timer. History does not relate quite why Craven-Walker then chose to spend 15 years developing this concept into a liquid-filled standard lamp. Suffice to say, he did, and by 1963 the invention was in place, with US patent 3,387,396 filed in 1965 (the same year the American rights were sold at a trade show in Germany) and issued in 1968. Craven-Walker kept hold of the rights for the rest of the world, restructuring his manufacturing business, while changing its name from Crestworth to Mathmos (which comes from the 1968 film 'Barbarella', where Mathmos is a lake of lava underneath the city of Sogo).
No matter what’s in there, we can all agree that lava lamps are uniquely mesmerizing. Want to take your viewing experience to the next level? Watch some wild GoPro footage from the inside of a lava lamp here. For many of Rankin’s generation, the lamps are synonymous with student digs and late nights spent listening to Radiohead while staring at a lava lamp in someone’s bedroom. This was during a resurgence spurred by an Austin Powers-fuelled nostalgia trip, but most people probably associate them with the 1960s when they were invented. In any decade other than the 1960s, it would have been categorised an 'executive toy'. Yet the Astro lamp, consisting of a bolus of wax heated by a light bulb, rising and falling in a tapered glass vessel of coloured liquid, was much more important than that. The 'lava lamp' as it later became known, with its Pop Art colours and obvious relationship with psychedelia, was to become a byword for the 1960s, selling by the millions. It became a major fad once a shop in Birkenhead announced Ringo Starr had bought one, and it received another sales boost after it appeared in several episodes of 'Doctor Who'. Under these two names, the company has made lava lamps of largely unchanged design for more than half a century. It was, of course, a hot property through the 1960s and 1970s, but the cooling of the trend saw its manufacture sink to a mere 1,000 units a year by 1989. However, with the new Mathmos banner, and a little help from an 'Austin Powers'-inspired nostalgia for the 1960s, it was hot once more, selling close to one million units in 2000. The liquid lamp was invented in 1963 by Edward Craven-Walker, a British engineer. Anatomy of a Lava Lamp
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Craven Walker didn’t envision the lamps as paragons of grooviness. “They weren’t marketed like that—they were almost staid,” Granger says. Indeed, an ad in a 1968 edition of the American Bar Association Journal touted the “executive” model—mounted on a walnut base alongside a ballpoint pen. To still be going six decades later is not a bad position to be in for a British company, which continues to operate from a tiny factory in Poole, Dorset. Its current owner started selling the lamps on a market stall in Camden, London, in the late 1980s. “I came across a lava lamp box and it had a Poole [phone] number on it, which is coincidentally where I’m from,” says Cressida Granger, managing director of Mathmos. “I called them up, and I started buying the lamps from their tiny factory around the corner. At that time, they were churning out a few hundred a year.” It’s not exactly an accident that so few people have a clear idea of what’s inside a lava lamp, as manufacturers are notoriously tight-lipped about their top-secret recipes. Having said that, knowing how lava lamps work has definitely shed some light on what types of ingredients must be in there, and industry professionals have shared a few clues over the years, too. An early duotone advertisement for the 'Astro' lamp, declared it to be the perfect gift "for one's relatives, one's friends – and, dash it all, oneself". Not only this, but it is a conversation piece styled to "fit any mood, any décor in the home and all discerning establishments". From this week, Rankin’s eye-catching electric blue design will be featured among them, with original photography from him on each box.
While the liquid in the bottle is clear, the lava is red. Once switched on, it takes about three to four hours to get the lava flowing nicely. But when it does it casts a lovely red glow. Even better, once that lava is moving about, it creates beautifully iconic 60s lava shapes. The bulbs in most motion lamps are usually 15 to 40 watts, so it can take up to an hour for the wax to heat enough to generate the trademark motion that makes motion lamps so interesting. When the light is turned on, the liquid and wax are heated. This causes the wax to expand more than the liquid. The wax then floats in the mixture, moving around the vessel to create an interesting display. Generally speaking, yes. They do get hot, though, so they’re best kept away from children. However, they’re just like any other lamp – unlikely to burn furniture or set anything on fire, so long as you’re careful. Lava lamps are also fragile. The bottles are made from glass, so although they’re pretty tough, they can break. And if you shake a lava lamp hard enough it will stop working properly and become cloudy. So don’t do that. How long can I leave a lava lamp on for?Inventor Edward Craven-Walker was a Second World War pilot and naturist (not, we gather, at the same time) The lamps grew in popularity, and Craven Walker’s reputation soared. At one point he invited the cast of the controversial musical Hair to his home, and they accepted – further sealing the lamps’ reputation as a must-have item for those who saw themselves as part of a counterculture. The secret blend of chemicals needed to achieve the perfect density might be specific to each lava lamp manufacturer, but that’s not to say people haven’t tried to create DIY lava lamps at home. According to Myria.com, some have done it by mixing the wax with dry-cleaning fluid or brake cleaner ( perchloroethylene) and mixing the water with pure salt and antifreeze ( ethylene glycol).
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