Technical Editor Margery Conner's PowerSource streams the latest developments in electronic power design and related technologies. Follow Margery on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/margeryc.
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Blog
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Memorial flame replaced by LEDs, financed by cell-phone antenna
Oct 22 2009 1:13PM | Permalink |Comments (5) |
When I saw the headline over at Make magazine, “Eternal flame replaced by LEDs,” I thought I understood immediately what the article would be about. Some monument somewhere which previously had a natural gas flame was “lowering its carbon footprint” by switching to LEDs. Not exactly.
It seems the memorial, located in the Ukraine, was erected after WWII to commemorate the many, many who died there. Natural gas was one of the plentiful commodities under the USSR regime, and for 50 years there was no trouble getting the flame illuminated with its own natural gas line. However, when things started to fall apart in the USSR several years ago, the free natural gas stopped, and it was too expensive to keep the monument lit. The flame went out.
Part of the solution, as you can guess from the title, is that the flame was replaced by energy efficient, long-life LEDs. But the other part was that the installation of the LEDs was financed by a local cell-phone provider, and the monument now acts as a cell-phone tower.
“The flame would be converted into a cell-phone tower, the antennae concealed by a round facade bearing a pixelated flickering LED-flame image funded by the cell-phone company. One of those capitalistic solutions where everyone wins, but only kind of.”
[Via Make’s blog, via Hack a Day]
Related entries in: Displays and indicators | HBLED |
Reader Comments
at 10/23/2009 6:34:57 AM, Chris PE said:
At least an antenna is concealed. Most of our beautiful landscapes are spoiled by ugly antenna towers.I have even seen a monstrosity where tower was made to look like an evergreen tree.I wish that there would be some artists involved in choosing places for antennas.Being into photography I use Photoshop a lot to remove ugly towers(which seem to be everywhere) from photographs.Signs of times.
at 10/23/2009 7:54:56 AM, Policebox said:
I don't find the "flame" very convincing, but I guess it is better than nothing. But honestly, who cares if there is an antenna hiding in there. As long as it is completely hidden, it doesn't detract from the memorial. What detracts is a cheesy artificial flame instead of a real one. It is still better than no flame at all.
at 10/23/2009 8:25:55 AM, Test comment said:
Test
at 11/3/2009 1:23:09 PM, William Ketel said:
The memorial statue is a symbol. Yes, it is an artisitc, even beautiful symbol. Probably most of us can agree on that. Then we see that the LED display is a symbol representing a flame. Perhaps a mix of orange and yellow LEDs would have been a more realistic symbol, that much is true. So a symbol holding up a symbol is OK. No, it is not as beautiful, at least not to some of us. BUT it is still a symbol, to remind us of what others did for us. The fact that it hides a cell phone antenna is just the price we pay. After all, "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch". That is not original with me, I take no credit except for copying it. But it shows here how true it is.
at 11/6/2009 6:39:52 AM, Chris PE said:
Fire is a sumbol and LED is not.Maybe we could send Russians some propane tanks and they would just need a guy to swap them at night.
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