Philips MI 50

This lantern is the precursor to the Philips MI 26/XGS 103 and as a result, is similar in appearance - indeed, both lanterns use the same type of bowl. Philips launched the MI 26 as a replacement for the side-entry MI 50 in 1985, but the top-entry version remained in production for a little longer, whilst the 70 Watt SON version of the, the MI 55 / MI 57) remained in production into the 2000s, but only as the SNK70 wall-mounted version.

As with my MI 26, this MI 50 also entered the Collection with a vacuum-formed bowl.

The canopy is similar in shape and appearance to that of the Thorn Beta 5 that appeared towards the end of the 1980s - the introduction of the MI 50 by Philips as a competitor for the Beta 5 in 1981 may have been the reason that Thorn took the opportunity to modernise their own product later in the decade, in order to prevent them from falling behind.

The vacuum-formed bowl means that the appearance of the lamp is even more refracted than normal!

A silver label on the inside probably provides most of the reflection on its own!

The original Philips ignitor has been replaced with a Thorn equivalent at some point. The original ballast (dated to February 1988) and capacitor remain, however. During maintenance, the gear tray would originally have been supported by the two plastic strips visible inside the canopy but these have perished over time.

The lantern was fitted to an AC Ford AC872 wall bracket on Sunday, 22nd June 2008. It was then powered up...however, nothing happened. After disconnecting the supply (and receiving a most enjoyable shock from the discharging capacitor!) I set about trying to figure out what wasn't working. As the ignitor was fairly new, I tried it on another circuit and it worked perfectly - meaning that the ballast was the faulty component. This soon became obvious when I tried to remove the output wire from its terminal - the terminal simply broke away and revealed a rather charred internal connecting wire! Fortunately, I had a spare Parmar ballast that could be installed using the existing fixing holes, so the two were duly swapped.

With the lantern back together, I powered up and hoped for the best. This time the lantern sprung into life:

Philips MI / F/XGS Lanterns in the Collection
		FGS 103 (June 2003)		FGS 104 (Oct 2002)
MI 8	MI 26 (June 1992)	MI 26 × 2 (June 1998)	MI 26 × 4 (Feb 1998 / Sept 1999)	MI 50 (Feb 1988)	MI 55 (Aug 1989)	MI 80 (Oct 1985)
		XGS 103 (Oct 2001)	XGS 103 (Dec 2002)	XGS 103 (Dec 2003)	XGS 104 (Oct 2002)