The second one on your list doesn't have visible starters. It looks really old (40s) so maybe it has a very early ballast with internal starter? It looks too old to be rapid start. Maybe it has conventional starters under the ballast cover?
Matt
I sent a message to the seller and he said that he will try to put up a picture of the internals.
It seems that if this is a rapid start fixture, it must be one of the first with a very old rapid start ballast.
If it is a old GE ballast with the internal starter, it would be a collectors item for sure as there were not very many made before the replaceable twist in starters were used.
There were some early 20 and 30 watt ballasts that had the starters that plugged in to the end of the ballast, but I think all the very early 40 watt GE ballasts had the internal starters.
The internal starter type ballasts had a high failure rate and much customer dissatisfaction causing GE to work with Bryant to come up with the twist in replaceable starter which were a air thermal type like the internal ballast starters were.
Of course the replaceable air thermal starters were eventually dropped for the glow bottle type starters in use today.
The air thermal starters worked very well and even kept a small current in the bulb filaments during operation which prolonged bulb life, but there was a down side to air thermal starters.
While the replaceable twist in air thermal starters were reliable, the problem was that if you happened to turn off the fixture and turn it back on, it would not start for a minute or two as the starter had to cool back down before resetting its self.
To add to the problem, is that the starter sits above the end of the bulb, the hottest part of the bulb, making the air thermal starter even hotter than it would normally be from its heating element, which causes even a longer time for the starter to cool down.
While the aluminum case of the starter dissipates heat from the heating element in the air thermal starter, the bulb end heats up the aluminum case by convection and radiant heat causing more over all heat to the aluminum case and thermal switch in the starter.
Now even a longer time is required to restart the fixture.
Again customer dissatisfaction caused the move to the glow bottle type starter that did not have this problem.
I have two NOS 1940 Sentry air thermal starters in my 1941 40 watt Fleur-o-ray daylight industrial unit with the original 1941 GE ballast with external starting compensator and the bulbs start and work perfect every time.
But if you turn it off and then back on....
It won't start for about two minutes.
Looking at the bulb holders in the picture, they seems to be conventional and nothing special.
May be the starters are under the porcelain reflector, now that would be different for sure.
One give away that it may be a rapid start ballast is the spring twist type reflector fasteners which were kind of a newer idea.
Most of the older fixtures had removable covers and had the ballast and bulb holders mounted to the reflector like the old Fleur-o-liers design used.
In any case, it will be interesting to see what is under the reflector.
