Heat balls!

[thundley4]

Just what every European household needs: heat balls. A German businessman has decided to start marketing the items as ’small heating devices’ for households requiring additional warmth.  Apparently, there’s a perceived need for that in Europe.

Anyway… very ingenious things, heat balls: they work by converting electricity into heat energy, with an impressive 95% efficiency, which makes them perfect for warming specific spots in the house.  They’re also absurdly simple to make: glass, tungsten, some argon to keep the device stable - it’s all very cheap to make, particularly since it’s all off-the-shelf technology.  Best of all: heat balls fit in a standard lamp socket, which means that you won’t need any kind of special equipment to use them!  They’re not perfect, though: the extremely small amount of energy wasted by a heat ball ends up generating photons, which means that you don’t want to look at a heat ball directly.  But even that can be mitigated by using exterior shades.  Really, on balance it’s a great little device: as Instapundit (H/T) notes, very green.

What’s that?  I’ve just described the incandescent light bulb?

Don’t be absurd: the European Union banned those, remember?  This is just a heat generator; that’s how it’s marketed, and that’s how it’s being sold.  If somebody plugs one in just to generate light, well, that’s hardly the seller’s fault, is it?

redstate

Can someone do that here?

[vesta111]

redstate

Can someone do that here?

I used to make the tungsten coils for those little devils, they are around still but hard to find.

[RightCoast]

What’s that?  I’ve just described the incandescent light bulb?

Don’t be absurd: the European Union banned those, remember?  This is just a heat generator; that’s how it’s marketed, and that’s how it’s being sold.  If somebody plugs one in just to generate light, well, that’s hardly the seller’s fault, is it?