How does a car cigarette lighter work?

Beej Jorgensen@lemmy.sdf.org to Technology@lemmy.world – 187 points – How does a car cigarette lighter work?
lumafield.com

This is an ad for something CT-scan-related, but it contains a good breakdown of how an old car cigarette lighter works. And it has a couple interactive CT Scan explorers past the video.

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Ah, the old school electric car cigarette lighter. Also known as "The curious child's first learning experience with the concept of 'hot' "

How many noses have fallen to its lure?

Fingertips for me, lol.

Same here. I was playing with the little cover thing, accidentally got it stuck, and the plastic handle started to melt off. Burnt the tips of my fingers trying to get it fixed.

I learned the hard way that

  1. it still worked even if the car was off and

  2. even if you pop it out early, perhaps thinking it's not working, it can still be hot enough to burn you even if it isn't red hot like you normally see it.

[off topic?]

You used to be able to get a special dispenser that would hand you a lit cigarette as you drove.

https://jalopnik.com/cars-once-came-with-built-in-cigarette-dispensers-1795733052

“...a built-in cigarette case which “hands” you a cigarette at the [unintelligible] of a convenient lever.”

Really disappointed that's all that link had... No pictures or illustrations, not even a proper description :/

No image or diagram? What's the point of going to the trouble of writing an article of solely words about something most people have never seen before?

Was the auto play auto focus video ad not enough of a motivator?

"motivator"? I'm sorry, what am I supposed to be motivated to do?

This company is does a cool thing. I saw them on Adam Savage’s YouTube last year. Any product they scan, is uploaded to their site. Any person can launch the web app and look at the scans of the things they’ve scanned. You can view the full images in all dimensions.

The 3d scans you can manipulate on that page are pretty cool.

Not all that surprised by the lighters mechanism though; a bit of nickle chrome wire for a heating element and some bi-metal strips to release it based on temperature. Pretty simple.

It's cool how elegant the design is that it automatically ejects when it's done heating up without needing a sensor and digital system to read and handle that action. It's also cool how a feature designed solely to light a cigarette has been adapted to power all sorts of other things. I wonder if these ports will be obsoleted in favor of only having USBs.

My electric car only has USB ports and no cigarette lighter, so I bet you're right about it being replaced.

My first GPS came with a cigarette lighter plug.

My next one came with a USB cable along with a cigarette lighter to USB adapter.

I think most these days now come with a USB cable but no adapter.

I’m now starting to see some devices come with USB-C cables.

You're still buying GPS devices? What's wrong with your phone?

Not judging - genuinely curious why some people buy them.

Bought my first one probably 20+ years ago at this point.

Bought my second one probably 10+ years ago when traveling abroad and it was more reliable and cheaper to have offline maps of the countries I was going to.

We like to travel to places that often have spotty cellular coverage, if at all.

Ah okay, I don't go to places with spotty coverage all that often...and when I do I just download that part of Google maps onto my phone and it works just fine. And by "that part" I mean a significant part of my country! Small world here in Europe I guess.

Me, being old, thinking about the kids who might see this and not understand it at all.