Let There be Light

I’m fascinated by lamps, lanterns, light bulbs, any man-made light source, and especially if it’s old. I have been known to take photos of light fixtures on restaurant walls and ceilings while waiting for a meal. When I tour a historic building, one of the first things I notice is the light fixtures.

Over the centuries, we have moved from whale oil lamps to kerosene, to arc lighting, tungsten bulbs and LED lights with a few others in between. Kerosene lanterns are still widely used overseas in rural areas where electricity is too expensive or scarce.

In about 1806, an Englishman named Humphry Davy invented arc lighting, which created a glowing electric arc through a gas. Tungsten incandescent light bulbs became pretty common around the 1880s. The bulb photo you see here is a reproduction of an Edison light bulb that you would see in a house or business when electricity first became common in the urban areas. Thomas Edison and Joseph Swan virtually invented a working tungsten light bulb at about the same time and both took out patents in 1879.

Even though we have progressed through various forms of artificial illumination up through LED lamps, which produce a light across a band gap in a semi-conductor (and yeah, I looked that up), it’s not so much the artificial light source that I find interesting. Most lamps and lanterns have been designed to not only provide illumination, they are also created to be a pleasant design element. I suppose you might not say that about industrial fluorescent lights, the ugly cousin of regular household lighting, but we do love our lamps and they are one of the first things we miss when the power goes out.

I have fond memories of the glass globes on some of the lamps in my great-aunt’s house in Iowa. They were lovingly hand-blown and painted and gave the parlor a nice warm glow.

To see more of my lamps and lanterns, please visit my gallery here:
https://mary-bedy.pixels.com/collections/lamps+and+lanterns



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