Industrial designer Zelf Koelman has built a fabulously twee alternative to electric light: an auto-lighting candle rig that even has a dimmer switch. Watch the video to see how it was done.
Koelman, a student of the Industrial Design program at Eindhoven University of Technology, built the “Switch Candle” in a bid to create awareness about how we perceive artificial light, how we interact with it and how we should not forget the amount of energy light needs to shine.
For a device that does something as simple as lighting candles, the Switch Candle is an impressively complex piece of kit. Here’s Koelman on the inner-workings of his gadget:
Candles are lit and extinguished in random. The lamp will automatically ignite new candles if the candles run out of wax and if they are available. The lamp checks if it needs to ignite a new candles by measuring the weight of each candle. In case the lamp runs out of full candles it will sense when the user puts a new candle in one of its sockets, and will immediately ignite the new candles to the amount set by the knob.
Do any readers reckon they could rig up a similar invention? If so, we’d love to see your attempts and will gladly publish them on the website (just try not to burn your house down in the process!)
You can watch the video below to see the Switch Candle in action.
[Via Gizmodo]
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