They have a long line of fluorescents under the marquee there. All are preheat. Some 20 watters on the end and 40 watters. I gathered up some starters and all my cool white bulbs I want to get rid of. I am NOT giving out my old ones, though.  I HOPE there are no bad ballasts! 

GRRRR!  These were NOT preheat. Rapid start single 40 watt fixtures and 20 watt trigger start. 1 20 watt fixture and 2 of the 40's won't light. I had a VERY hard time getting the bulbs out. Most of them had been painted around.  I took out the "good" GE 20 watt cool whites with inside etches. Had good end banding at both ends, and were likely there in the late 60's until the theater closed as a MOVIE theater in 1974. It is now home to the Newberry Community Players.  There were 2 watt saver 40 watt bulbs that need to go but I had gotten very tired. It was quite difficult getting the bulbs out of the sockets.  I have 3 bulbs to play with now.

Powell

that sound like some one got care less with the paint. making it a pain to remove bulbs.
at least you have a few nice tubes out of the deal.

And they have thick end banding and brown on the inside of the rings......from the 60's. Now to figure out how to get the paint off.


Powell

The edge of a bad circuit board is exactly the good hardness for scratching paint without damaging surfaces (and i think it won't leave any scratches on the glass). It can scratch plastic and metal though

Indoor paint is water dissolvable - wet it before scratching off it can help

The paint has been there decades. I am going to get a paint scraper.....

as a side note some of the bulbs were so dirty I thought there were some black enders and it was just dirt!

Powell

You can use goo gone or goof off paint remover to get the dried paint off.

I got a paint scraper and it took a bit of work, and I may finish off the lamps with this.

you should photogragh this sloppy paintjob on this one. one time i had a hard time removing incadescent bulb
some one put glue on the shell of the lamps and being screwed in. it a bad prank forceing to replace all the light fixture in the rent house after the moved out.

I had the same happen to me once with the E27 socket. There is a side contact touching the side of the base, not the screw shell iself. The side contact in this socket was a bit bent with sharp edge so it cut (a hole) into the base of the lamp when it was screwed in. Then i needed to rock the bulb in and out 1mm at a time for an hour to get it out of the socket. Succeeded at last. (vintage lamp and fixture - wanted both to be intact)

And there are te CFLs and 2Ds that fall apart after their plastic part goes brittle, and you are stuck with just the base in the socket

you should photogragh this sloppy paintjob on this one. one time i had a hard time removing incadescent bulb
some one put glue on the shell of the lamps and being screwed in. it a bad prank forceing to replace all the light fixture in the rent house after the moved out.

My friend make one "discovery" with lightbulbs in places accessible to many people (nearly public) he was replacing there:
After tightening into the socket, if he wiggle the lamp so the cement gave up, the "lifetime" of such bulb "miraculously increase" from few days to few months.

Obviously it had nothing to do with real lamp life, but with bulb thefts - someone stole the good bulb and put there his failed one.
Bulb with loosened cement was not possible to remove without completely destroying it, so it was out of the thieves interest...