This is part 02 of the story "Teddy and the Lamp". You may want to read Part 01 to get a better perspective of the main character, Teddy Blackstone. With most of my stories, there is a little bi built-in. Enjoy and please feel free to comment!
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I could not wait to get the lamp to my work office. All the staff and employees who had been working together with my partners to get me to sell my family's company had to pay. All the false accusations and forcibly turning the company my grandfather built into a shell of the technical innovation of what it once was.
I had decided I needed to make a plan. The goal was to take back my company. It was going to take some big moves. The lamp was the answer.
A few days after Julie had come over to get her mail, I thought it was best to keep the lamp somewhere safe when I was not using it. It was large, heavy, and ornate. I kept the lamp in one of my spare bedrooms with a light sheet over it to keep it from getting too much exposure. Something that old concerned me as an electrical engineer.
A few days later, I went to the spare room and turned on the lamp. I was thinking about how I was going to get the lamp into my office. The lamp would look completely out of place. Did I need to remodel my office with a 1950's era design?
Suddenly there was a pop and the lamp turned off. I nearly panicked. As an electrical engineer and inventor, I knew I could fix it most anything electrical, but how it worked was a mystery. Did it just break completely, was it as simple as a lightbulb?
My thoughts went wild.
I had a workshop in my home where I had all kinds of electrical equipment and tools. I had taken the lamp there. As I was moving it, I remember saying to myself, "Damn this thing is heavy." It was built solid as if, once it was placed, it was not meant to move.
When I had looked over the lamp, I noticed a door on the back that was held on by several screws. The lamp had been built tough and to last.
After I took off the door and looked in, to my surprise, I could see all the way into the lamp and it looked quite simple in design.
There was a normal 60-watt light bulb that was obviously burned out. But I could also see inside and noticed the crystals and how the lamp worked.
There was a long glass bottle that held the crystals inside. There was a lid on the bottle. It looked like a long jelly jar, maybe about 18 inches in length with a screw-on lid.
When the lamp was switched on, about a quarter of the jar was exposed to the light and when the lamp was switched to high, a panel would move and expose all of the crystals to the light. So, the lamp did not get any brighter, just more of the bright light would hit the crystals and create the incredible power of the lamp.
As someone who was at the beginning of LED lighting and even created patents, I knew that LED lighting would take the lamp into the 21st century.
The lamp was extremely low tech for today's standard, but was probably high tech when it was built.
I began to think up a design for the lamp. The question was, would even more light than from the light of a 60-watt lightbulb allow me to use less crystals? If more light from less crystals was the answer, this would allow for compact designs, small unseen lamps or even portable handheld designs.
I took the lamp completely apart and removed the jar with the crystals. I opened the jar looked in. There where all different sizes of crystals. It looked as though they had been broken apart or removed from something larger at one time. I remembered my uncle telling about the painting in the cave. It showed a giant eye descending from the sky.
I thought when I first heard the story, it was probably a meteor that had crashed into the earth centuries ago and the Ivacates had no idea what it really was.
Then again, as crazy as the crystals were, who knew, maybe it was an eye from the sky. All I knew was they were mine now.
I needed a prototype. Something that just functioned. No need for a final product. The first thing to do was to measure the illuminance needed to unleash the power of the crystals. My uncle told me that at one time the Ivicates only used fire to light them. Surely modern-day LEDs would be incredible.
I created a small flat aluminum lamp box to hold a few crystals. The aluminum was about a quarter-inch thick. It was about the size of a Mac Mini.
On the top of the box I used a clear glass plate that was about a quarter-inch thick, then put on a square aluminum top. This created a sandwich between the glass and aluminum.
I then added a clear rubber material on the inside to hold the crystals in place so they would not move around and break.
For lighting, I installed four LED dimmable lights on the inside of the lamp box and a small Bluetooth remote dimmer switch. Now I could use a remote control to raise and lower the power of the light from anywhere in a room. The remote was programmable so I could just tap a number between 1 and 10 and the lights would respond.
For power I used rechargeable battery packs from two iPads. This way I could carry the lamp box and place it anywhere and it would stay powered for days, even weeks.
Even though I was not going for a certain look, the lamp box looked quite modern and would be inconspicuous sitting on a table.
Now I was ready for a test. The next day I waited for Brenda the mail lady to arrive. I grabbed the lamp and set the remote on 5. In perfect timing, Brenda came to drop off the mail at 10:00 AM and I met her at the mailbox. She says, "Hi Mr. Blackstone, here is your mail." She began to work up a conversation with me.
I thought, "Is it working?" It was on half power. That should have had a stronger response. Using the remote control, I tapped number 10 on the remote and Brenda stopped and started looking at me with big eyes. "Mr. Blackstone, your pants would look so much better lying on the floor. Why don't we go inside baby!", she said out loud staring at my crotch.
I smiled and thanked her, turned off the lamp, then turned around and walked back into my home. I thought, this was just a test, nothing more.