Flash photography used to be pretty wild

Brighter and goopier than I could have possibly imagined.

I’m a little disappointed we didn’t get a “And through the magic of buying two of them!” as Dan stepped into frame at the start there

As a person who worked in a G.E. Lamp Plant for over 20 years making the actual bulbs for the FlashCube, SuperCube, HiPower, MagiCube, & FlipFlash (names such as GE, Osram, Wootan, & several store brands); your assessment of the parts (glass bulb, glass beads, zirconium/magnesium foil, tungsten filament, oxygen, primer, etc...) were spot-on. The most dangerous part of the process was the use of the primer for MagiCube, which the post was dipped into. (A safer & different primer was used to dip the tungsten filament & electrical posts for the other flash bulbs. That primer wasn't as pressure sensitive.) The cup that held the primer was changed every 3-4 hours. As long as the primer wasn't dried out on the inside of the dip cup; which happens as the level in the cup drops, it was safe. BUT dried primer was extremely volatile & accidents have happened. As a side note... back in the heyday of chemical flash; our plant was just one of several that ran over 100 machines; each machine producing 2000-2500 bulbs/hour, 24 hours a day, 6+ days a week, for about 20 years. THAT'S A LOT OF BULBS!!

That face at 30:52 is just priceless. The eyebfow raise the way the face just becomes unveiled from the darkness. Just perfect.

I do remember people using those Magicubes!!! eh... I'm old I guess...

Using 2020s era photo tech to see 1960s era photo tech at single digit microsecond time intervals is an actual technology connection. ❤

You just answered an old mystery of mine by sparking an old memory. When I was a young whippersnapper probably under the age of 8 I discovered electricity. I would like to hook a bunch of batteries together in series and connect random things to them(motors, leds, random components that would just get hot). One of the things was an interesting looking light bulb that looked just like the ones you're showing... I connected it to probably about five or six C cells. Then BAM! Mega flash blinded me scared the shit out of me I was like I need to respect the batteries more. At that time I thought I just blew the thing up now I know it worked as design. Remember my grandma watching in the background and giggling.. That evil woman taking joy in my response 😅 ❤ lol. All this time now i know!

I did a second year university project on the materials and processes within the Magicube in 1986 - when they were still a current technology. The oxygen inside is pressurized so as to allow a greater mass of burning zirconium per bulb for a brighter flash. The ignition tube encloses a wire post, centred up the middle. The post is coated with a pyrotechnic compound, so that when the striker wire hits the outside, the tube is crushed onto the post, pressurizing the pyrotechnic coating hammer and anvil style for a more reliable ignition. A fantastic project. Thanks to Prof. Jim Williamson for that opportunity!

My Uncle, Bernard Kopelman, invented the Magicube. He was the head of research at Sylvania Lighting. I remember him explaining how it worked back around 1970 when I was a teenager. He was a material scientist and before working at Sylvania he was involved in the Manhattan Project developing materials for nuclear reactors. Sylvania (GTE) rewarded him for his work on the Magicube by making him the Vice President of their materials division. He regretted the promotion the rest of his career since he was an inventor at heart and did not enjoy being a manager. My uncle got me a summer job at the Sylvania factory in 1976 when they were developing a machine to make a million electronic flash tubes.

I love Gav going “na na na naa na na na” at 32:42 It makes me feel like he’s a genuine fan of your channel.

In my college years in the early 80's I was in the co-op Engineering program at General Electric. I worked at a plant that made flashcubes. We conducted reliability testing by exposing the flashcubes to high humidity for several weeks. Once the data was collected and the tests were completed, I would take the flash lamps out of each cube and combine them in a large grocery bag which was quite dangerous due to 'sympathetic flash', which means when one lamp flashes, they all flash. I'd connect 2 wires to one lamp, put it in the middle of the bag which held several hundred lamps, place it on the porch at night and wait for my roommate to come home. Touch the 2 wires to a 12 volt battery and you'd get what looked like a small nuclear explosion scaring the hell out of him. Great fun back in the day. 33:52

I love the little turbo whine that the electric flash bulbs had when revving up to fire.

I'm not ashamed to share that I once picked up an already-opened box of magic cubes and they all slid out and hit the garage floor and ALL went off at once. That was an expensive lesson back in the day.

I love how so many youtubers bring Gavin on not because of clickbait, but because of his equipment and experience. Like, barely anyone mentions that they got him on in the title or thumbnails, so you just get surprise Gavin in the middle of a video, and honestly I love that.

When I was in EW ‘A’ school in the early 70’s on Treasure Island, there was also an ET school where Navy Electronic Technicians were trained to troubleshoot and maintain a high powered radar. Not far from the ET school was the Navy Exchange. One morning as the high power radar was energized and the students were working on it, the altitude adjustment of the rotating antenna slipped and the antenna angle dropped. As the antenna’s rotation swept by the Navy Exchange, all the fluorescent ceiling lights lit up from the RF energy and all the flash bulbs and magicubes were set off.

32:20 "flash for one frame .. $0.25 .." I had to switch in my mind from the 200.000 frames PER SECOND Gav just shot to the one frame of film he meant...

The fact that this is one of the rare times in Slow Mo Guys history where there was actually too much light for the camera really says a lot about how insanely bright these things burn Also, love the shot at 30:47

As a kid (born in '78) I would dismantle the blue dot flash cubes and throw the bulbs on the concrete (post down, of course) for magic ninja escapes when playing with friends after sunset. Until my parents discovered we suddenly had no flash cubes.

Imagine being the engineer who designed these and finally being able to see how it works not just understand it theoretically or in testing.

I am 60 and I remember these very well. You said it was such an ordeal to do all this. But at the time it wasn't. We did not have the luxury of the mobile phone and we knew nothing different. Most of us used to carry our cameras in a camera bag which had space for flashbulbs, flash cubes, batteries, spare film etc. It also meant that we had to become very familiar with exposure rates and the types of films we needed to get the shots we wanted to get. Yes, there was an expense involved, but that just meant we gave a lot of thought to the pics we wanted to take and we did not waste exposures on trifling trash like pictures of a meal we were just about to eat. It also meant that we ended up with photo albums galore and drawers full of photo's. So there was good and bad. Even now I look through pictures of my childhood and I compare them to pictures of my grandchildren that I have taken on my phone. The joy for us nowadays is the spontaneity of taking a pic of a situation. However with the earlier cameras, like the Kodaks and then later, the SLR cameras, we had the joy of getting the picture "Just right" and then the nervous wait of getting the film processed only to realise we had left the lens cap on. So it was not an "Ordeal", it was simply all we had at the time and we made the most of it.