Every bulb is rigged with a special chip that explodes if you try to repair it. This is to symbolize “the awesomeness of explosions”.
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Chronillogical
a sci-fi webcomic about time traveling grad students
Every bulb is rigged with a special chip that explodes if you try to repair it. This is to symbolize “the awesomeness of explosions”.
I love Milo’s face as he says “Nope! Last one.” Kudos John.
Also I’m curious to know just how the bulb was incorporated. Will that be elucidated? Maybe they need it as a variable resistor? Perhaps specifically the blackbody radiation curve of tungsten at a certain temperature?
Technically you could just reroute the circuit so that it did not include the lightbulb/socket. Not really that hard to do.
I would think that ‘fundamentally incorporated’ means that rerouting the circuit would be more like rebuilding the whole machine.
Also:
LOL that’s the kind of corporation that knows how to handle it’s PR.
Could they just use any lightbulb to replace the burned out one, or do they ab-so-lu-tly need “Spivak bulb and socket”?
Also, if their customers find out that they were fooled by those quickly burning bulbs, I guess the company would lose one helluva of them! Not the most intelligent idea after all! 😛
John and I were considering doing another strip about the bulb, but we decided to move forward with other stuff. Instead, I’ll attempt to answer your questions here!
@Gary: Hey! You over there. has got it: they can’t just bypass the bulb because it really is a fundamental component of the machinery.
@Theplayer131: Spivak Bulb and Socket specially designed the bulb for use in the CHRONOS project. To repair the machine, they need a Spivak Time Lord Series™ bulb. Depending on where they are, it may be tricky to come across.
@Colin: Umm… yes! Both of those things!
This kind of reminds me of something my dad has told me about. When he was young, the power companies were still encouraging people to use more electricity(!). They produced a kit to build your own desk lamp, which was specially designed so that it could only accept 100W bulbs.