July 22, 2026
Glow-up or blow-up?
Drake Anthony Recreates the Mechanical Bulb First Seen in 1675 – TechEBlog
A DIY glowing bottle wowed fans while commenters dragged the blog and side-eyed the safety
TLDR: Drake Anthony rebuilt a 350-year-old glowing flask that lights up when shaken, turning an old science oddity into a striking DIY demo. Commenters were far more divided about the packaging: they loved Drake, hated the blog, and nervously questioned the safety setup.
This story had two plots, and the comments made sure of it. Yes, maker Drake Anthony recreated a strange 1675 trick where a glass flask lights up when shaken — basically a spooky little bottle lamp with no batteries, no wires, and major mad-scientist energy. He taught himself glassblowing, worked around limited depth vision in one eye, pumped the flask down to very low pressure, added mercury, and eventually got a bright glow by experimenting with gases like neon. The result? A centuries-old science mystery turned into a very modern "wait, that actually works?" moment.
But the real fireworks were in the replies. A chunk of the community barely wanted to talk about the experiment at all because they were too busy roasting the write-up. One person complained the site was "essentially a summary of the original video," while another said the "crummy blog crashed my browser tab," which is a brutal review in the age of ad-stuffed pages. The dominant hot take was basically: skip the blog, watch the YouTube video.
Still, Drake himself came out looking like the hero of the comment section. One fan called him "a treasure," while another delivered the classic internet compliment-slap combo: cool guy, amazing project... but in a real chemistry lab, that level of protection would get you fired instantly. So the crowd verdict was deliciously split: the experiment rules, the blog drools, and the safety vibes are giving everyone mild heart palpitations.
Key Points
- •The article reports that Drake Anthony recreated the 1675 “barometric light” effect using a glass flask that glows when shaken.
- •It explains the phenomenon as charge generated by mercury moving across clean glass, which excites gas molecules inside the vessel and produces light.
- •Anthony made the flask himself, evacuated it to about 5 millitorr, and retained residual gas and mercury vapor that the article says were necessary for the effect.
- •Using impure mercury produced only a faint blue-white glow, but adding neon at about 100 torr created a much brighter light visible in normal room lighting.
- •Additional experiments included copper pellets, Teflon, Galinstan, bent versus straight vessel shapes, and a Tesla coil to influence the discharge.