Went on a trip earlier this evening to fetch a CLM mini gumball incandescent head. I also collected what I was told was a "sodium" street-light, actually finding a well used 400w metal-halide cram-lamp inside. Ok, maybe it was a 400w MV and converted. Nope. Original ballast 250 watt MV. Awesome score again on another rough Quebec trip (traffic, construction & atrocious roads).

By photographing the weathered label and simply pushing/coaxing out the details with photoshop I found out exactly what this thing is. FORM 250 1B? It's actually 250 IB. Ballast works great after putting in a 250w MV lamp!Googling "Form 250" comes up with nothing much, let alone Form 250-IB.

Moral of the story: Even though it might be far and the shown pics are bad, follow your Lighting Instinct!

Interesting finds. I noticed Quebec seems to have the most older luminaires on Kijiji/Facebook out of all the Canadian provinces.

There were several luminaires with the "Fish Head" style form factor made. In the US the Pemco Brightway Jr. was the most common example. In Ontario EPAC (Electric Power Accessories Corp.) based in Brampton, ON Had a similar design as the Pemco. Canadian General Electric (CGE) also made one, the Form 250IB which is what you have. The CGE version seems to be the rarest and the least documented luminaire of the three.

I don't think there are pictures on LG, but there are pictures of the nameplate and the side profile of one with a missing refractor on GoL. Might want to save those GoL pictures for future reference as GoL sometimes goes down.

The CLM mini gumball is interesting too, I think it's in the same housing as the later McGraw Edison 125w Mercury "cup lights" but obviously designed for incandescent or remote MV. I thought you were talking about the Spherolite Jr. until I saw your picture.

Looks like the previous owner of that Form 250 just stuck in any random lamp he could find. Good thing the ballast still works with a 250w MV lamp though. If you look on the capacitors, there's usually a date code either printed or embossed into the case.

So it's IB and not 1B in the Form 250 XX part?

In both facebook listings, the single pic for the "fish-head" fixture was enough to get me going while the two pics for the CLM gumball, which looked exactly like the McGraw-Edison cup-light as you mention, except for the smaller top, was also an incentive to get me up north. And yes, there are more interesting fixtures in rural Quebec, some of which are too far for me, and some are just too pricey.

The 250w GE Form 250IB was listed at $70 CAD. I got it for $50.
The CLM mini gumball was listed at $30 CAD and I got it for $25.
Those prices are near the top end for what I'd give for well used "vintage" lights.

Yeah IB or Internal Ballast. Westinghouse used the same designation on the internally ballasted version of the OV-10. Strange CGE used it though as American GE called their early internally ballasted luminaires the "Power Packs". I'm curious on the date code on the capacitor for this reason. My hunch is it was made around the same time as the other internal ballast luminaires (~1956 to ~1962).

Rural Ontario sometimes had good stuff too but the time spent on the drive and the cost of fuel sometimes dissuades me from getting them unless if it's something special/rare. I would have considered it for a fish head or one of those cuplights though.

The prices in your area seem to be a bit cheaper than the prices in Ontario too. $50 is typical for a well used light but sometimes $75. Usually I don't pay more than $50 unless if it's something special. $75 I'll consider for things that are either NOS or surplus new stock. The reason I mention seeing interesting lights in Quebec is I remember finding stuff like B2217s, OV-14Bs, OV-50s on Facebook/Kijiji there, stuff that's basically unheard of in Ontario. Especially around Toronto.

Unusual long ballast. The ballast compartment is a tight small space, and was filled with dead insects. I lit a Philips 250w lamp after vacuuming thoroughly and before removing the capacitors. It also appears to be a Goldfinger II mounting bracket inside the end opening.

I see no date or recognize a date-code on the capacitors, even though the identical stamping on each is quite clear. Nothing on the bottoms. Anything you can tell?

How about that 63-50? 50th week of 1963? Totally uneducated guess but sounds about right LOL.

Yeah, a lot of the older GE luminaires had pretty crazy ballast setups. "63-50" is most likely the date as code Foxtronix said, GE typically used a Year-Week Number format on capacitors so 50th week of 1963 should be correct. A bit newer than I thought.

The use of two triple terminal dual section capacitors (6.6µF/2.5µF) is also pretty unique too. Not a lot of ballasts used them.

I wonder if the Form 250IB was offered concurrently with the M-250R or was the predecessor to it. In the US, the predecessor to the M-250R was the Form 250B Powerpack (see here page 6) which was more akin to a clamshell with a ballast bolted to the back than a cobrahead.

Unfortunately there's little information on Canadian luminaires available online like with the American luminaires. Sometimes if you go to a large municipal/university library they might have a few vintage lighting catalogues you could look through but that's about it.

Thanks for that 1960 GE-Lighting-Systems guide on scribd. It's very interesting how these major companies provided detailed yet succinct information in their catalogues. A wealth of information here, now saved!

Another facebook listing that I'm looking in is this - https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/1944704485718290/

At first it looked a lot like a Westy OV-14B, but it obviously isn't. Seller has no clue of even the watts. What is this one? About an hour away from me.

1st gen OV-25 "flat bottom" I'd say .

Yeah thats a 1st gen OV-25. I wish i had similar luck on my local FB…

Yeah, Scribd is a great source of older lighting literature. That user, Alan Masters has a lot of lighting literature all scanned and freely available from the 50s to the 90s. The Internet Archive is another good site for reading up on lighting from the early 1900s to the 1960s. Mostly interior lighting though.

That's a Westinghouse Canada OV-25 First Generation. The larger 400w MV companion to the OV-14B and the first "cobrahead" luminaire that was introduced to the market in 1956/1957. It looks to be in great shape compared to the ones still in service here, the wattage tag is still legible too. $50 is a steal for it IMO. Westinghouse Canada made their luminaires in Granby, QC which is probably the reason why there seems to be a lot of older Westinghouse luminaires from Quebec.

Another facebook listing that I'm looking in is this - https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/1944704485718290/

At first it looked a lot like a Westy OV-14B, but it obviously isn't. Seller has no clue of even the watts. What is this one? About an hour away from me.

That fixture looks NOS with dust on it