Tuesday, January 04, 2011

Heat Balls

No, it's not me three days after New Years, its a product currently marketed in Europe. Red State tells the tale-

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.

Let's be clear, however, in that we're not exactly talking about a new invention. In fact, its been around for a while.



Of course, its illegal in Europe, but only if you market it and sell it as a light, not as an extra heat source. Pretty clever way if you ask me to look the man in the eye and say-

FUCK YOU FAGGOT!