As some of you know, neon has cropped up in many odd places over the years. As a photographer, I've not only used it as subject matter, but sometimes in the production process as well. Usually in those cases, it was in the form of a so-called "Cold Light" head that replaced the normal lamphouse on an enlarger....some of them even had two different neon units of differing colors so you could vary the intensity of each one for use with multi-contrast paper. A far less, common use, however, was for safelights in the darkroom. This example was made by Aristo, most likely during the 50s, and it has some wonderful ruby and noviol tubing in it. Aristo was later bought out by Voltarc (now known as "light sources") and their product line has since been eliminated.
The switch on the drop cord turns it on and off, and switching the choice of tube is effected by pulling the drop cord, causing it to pull a small chain switch to select the transformer/tube in use. Although an antique by some standards, it works well and I plan to put this one in use in my darkroom, allowing me to further combine by neon and photographic habits. A short video of its operation can be found on my Instagram account, @hausrobert
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DMf85jztqoO/?igsh=bzhoNXZyMWM2cG90
