See here for some background of their early days and photos : http://www.bbceng.info/Operations/transmitter_ops/Reminiscen...
No glow from the mercury rectifiers though - they're steel cased thanks to being 600kW
They operate many of the transmitters each weekend. They applied to the FCC for a commercial coast station license, probably the last one, and got it. So they can send at quite high power. They talk to museum ships around the world.
[1] https://www.flickr.com/photos/trained_4_life/10978575914
I rarely see this in common expression. Nice choice.
Old tech has great appeal. Scale is our size, and features forces, artifacts we can see, hear and feel easily. I can imagine that glow. Damn cool.
There is also a particle "do" which means "into" and also "up/until". In Czech, the opposite of this sense is "přes", meaning "over/beyond".
So this is the basis of an old joke that "docent" means someone weighing up to 100 kg; above that they become a "přescent":
https://cestina20.cz/slovnik/prescent/
:)
It is not all that widely used in the US either, in my experience anyway.
I wonder what other EM ranges it emits. Glowing purple makes me think of UV but maybe also some X-Rays?
As for x-rays the typical voltage drop across a long tube is like 100 volts, the whole point of a ballast is matching the normal hundred or so volt drop to whatever your local line voltage is using at a constant controlled current. Anyway the penetrating power of an xray is linked to the voltage drop, so it would be difficult even theoretically to generate xrays stronger than a hundred volts or so. So given that it takes 50 KV to 100 KV for a dental xray source to beam completely thru a head, you're looking at like a thousandth the penetrating power. Very hand wavy estimate that 100 volt xray source will likely not penetrate the glass and almost certainly not penetrate clothing or the surface layer of dead skin and skin oils.
The risk assessment for being nearby a heavy cloud of vaporized hot mercury would seem to imply the main risks would be biochemical in nature not physics in nature. Actually the most realistic risk is an economic death penalty if that leaks and requires hazmat cleanup.
[1] https://www.e2v.com/shared/content/resources/File/documents/...
Common beam power tubes and power pentodes sometimes glow blue from residual gas in the tube even with plate potentials ~500V.
I was shocked when a docent walked over and turned it on. The rectifiers lit the whole room up with a beautiful purple glow. Beautiful.
Doing a quick web search it looks like the museum is no longer. Too bad - even though I couldn't read the plaques, it was still one of the most fascinating museum experiences I've ever had.