try this, it works.
  On 8/23/2006 at 11:23 PM Scott Quinn wrote:
 The DEC paper is Western Research Lab (WRL)
Technote #13
at 
http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/Compaq-DEC/WRL-TN-13.html . I thought
everyone here had already read it when I made the joke about the pickle as
a hotdog-done indicator. 
 No, but it confirms what I thought the light source might be--an arc.
 Back when I was in college, I played around with a rather spectacular
 sodium-arc experiment.  Using a 400 vdc power source, I connected a
 teaspoon filled with table salt to v- and a test probe through a 4H choke
 to v+.  One could strike an arc by touching the test probe to the teaspoon
 and draw a stable bright yellow arc several inches long.  I don't know if
 the choke served as a simple ballast or if it was part of a simple
 oscillator.
 Cheers,
 Chuck
 
--
Jim Isbell
"If you are not living on the edge, well then,
you are just taking up too much space."