GPO Phone Exchange Lamp

A while back I saw a video on the This Museum Is (Not) Obsolete YouTube channel about using a GPO (as in the General Post Office) phone exchange alarm lantern as a lamp. These were used to silently indicate that there was an issue somewhere, such as a power failure a stuck relay in one of the racks. Since then I'd been keeping an eye out on eBay to see if I could also get one, and I did, for not too much money.

Unfortunately during shipping I lost two panes of glass. Each "window" of the lamp has two panes to sandwich the coloured gel and masks. It doesn't matter too much though, it just means two of the masks are a bit floppy.

The lamp came with four 50v incandescent bulbs, and three of them still worked after being shipped here. That's not a very convenient voltage though, so I wired the four sockets in parallel and replaced them with 240v LED bulbs.

After leaving it in the middle of my bedroom for a week or so, I finally bothered to make some wooden spacers (to accommodate the wiring) and hung it next to my bed. It gives a very pleasing glow.

Tags: projects