"Our Lamphouses Never Explode!!!" (I can't do the underscore on the last two words) was obviously seen as an important consideration at the time. I have heard that this was much more of a problem with early xenons than it is now.

Of the advantages claimed over xenon, were the first two, "They cost less to buy" and "They cost less to operate", really true. It seems hard to believe that these things with all the complexity of the feed mechanisms, plus the rotation and water cooling for the positive could be cheaper to buy than a relativly simple xenon lamphouse. It doesn't say if the cost of the water cooler was included in the price being compared.

As for being cheaper to run, if that was true, then carbons must have been very much cheaper then than they are now. I suppose that at that time the staffing of projection rooms would have been the same for carbon or xenon, so there would be no extra labour cost.

Does anybody have any price lists for lamphouses, xenon lamps and carbons from this period, so we can make our own comparison?

"Union made by skilled American labour" Would you see anything similar in a modern advertisment in the U.S.? Here in England we don't seem too concerned where things are made, (almost everything sold here here seems to be made in China now anyway, and some of it is very good, the days when China just produced junk are now gone), We did have the rather strange habit of stressing "Empire made" long ago.

What is the difference between the Super Core-Lite and the Super-Cinex?

Does anybody have a xenon advertisment from the same period, it might made an interesting comparison.

What was the date of this? The Ashcraft lamps always look rather old-fashioned to me, and I don't think of them as being contemporary with xenons.

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The primary difference between the Cinex and Corelight was speed. The Cinex was f/2.0 or f/1.8, and the Corelight was really fast, like f/1.4 or f/1.6, or something ridiculous (can't recall offhand the exact numbers).

The Super versions had big blowers on top.

Ashcraft Company failed in 1972, shortly after Clarence S. Ashcraft passed away. The son ran it into the ground, as I understand. They had developed a xenon lamphouse, with an automatically rotating bulb, of all things. They spent 2 years developing their xenon lamphouse, and only weeks after they announced it, the company folded.

The xenon design resembled what would become XeTron's 2000 watt lamphouse, with the bulb mount and reflector that swings open to relamp. I think LP Associates ended up with the Ashcraft design.

The last carbon lamphouse Ashcraft ever made, the Super 180 (or was it Super 160 - #$%@* my memory's failing me), was introduced in 1968. It was the last hurrah.

Ashcraft lamps were the top of the line, as far as I was concerned. They cost 4 or 5-thousand dollars a pair in the 1960s. Super Corelights hit the streets circa 1963.

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