Awesome demonstration! I knew that these types of starters were around for a very long time, my 1948 GE catalog lists the Watchdog starters, I never understood why they were nowhere near as common as the standard glow starters. Worth noting that under normal conditions a starter normally outlives several lamps and lasts for decades, and when you see a fluorescent lamp only lighting at the ends in a preheat fixture, the starter has failed shorted, and 9 times out of 10 resulted from continuously attempting to start a burned out lamp that blinks. If the starter failed first (very unlikely) the lamp can be damaged by prolonged lighting at the ends. The ballast can overheat and fail, possibly smoking and catching fire if there's no thermal protection or the protection failed. Very old ballasts often did not have thermal protector.

@saelkiesongs

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Indeed, and I have heard of some cases where a ballast failure has caused a building fire. Years ago I read of some collectors of vintage lights wiring low-amperage fuses inline with the ballast. This would at least cut power to the ballast if the ballast started to draw more current than normal since it may still not be enough current draw to trip the breaker of the circuit it would be on. I've done this with my oldest fluorescent lights as a precaution.

@Sparky-ww5re

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@@saelkiesongs low amp inline fuses ? That sounds like a good idea even with more modern class P ballasts because sometimes the thermal protector can weld the contacts closed and allow for a building fire should overheating occur for any reason. I've heard of cases of this happening when 34 watt energy saving lamps aka Watt-Mieser, Econ-O-Watt, are used with older ballasts designed for true 40 watt T12 4 footers, which tend to cause the ballast to run hotter than usual and after the thermal protector cycles repeatedly for some time fails closed causing smoke, dripping tar and sometimes fire. Do you have a recommended fuse size for some common ballasts wattages/types?

@saelkiesongs

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@@Sparky-ww5re I think I used 2A fuses because that's what I had on hand, but it might be even better to use 1A for a double 40w fixture as those ballasts don't draw more than 0.85A. The fuse wouldn't necessarily stop a ballast from overheating like the thermal protector is supposed to, but if the ballast is shorted or otherwise drawing too much current for some reason it would cut that fixture out without affecting other stuff on the circuit. Since all magnetic ballasts are at least well-used or have been sitting on a shelf or in a fixture unused for years....the capacitors are more prone to failure, so I bet failures will be more and more common among whatever is still used. I had a F15T8 choke ballast on a terrarium fixture short out a few years ago...it wasn't protected at all and became very hot, fortunately I noticed the lamp was dark and noticed the electrical burning smell. Ultimately it blew the fluorescent tube so then went open circuit and deactivated itself quickly that way.