Below you will find books and documents related to early light bulbs.
This book is a must-read for any light bulb collector, and for anyone interested in knowing how electric light was developed from its earliest beginnings, up to 1927, when the book was published.
I have rearranged the text for better reading on a web page, and relocated many of the images, many of which were in the wrong place, especially in chapter 1. The index was omitted.
- Cover and Introduction
- Chapter 1: Development of Electric Lighting Prior to Edison's Invention
- Chapter 2: Edison's Invention of a Practical Incandescent Lamp, a Complete Lighting System and Their Commercial Introduction
- Chapter 3: Development of Filaments
- Chapter 4: The Vacuum, "Getters" and the Gas Filled Lamp
- Chapter 5: Leading-in Wire Developments
- Chapter 6: Glass Construction
- Chapter 7: The Base
- Chapter 8: Photometry
The information contained in this book used to be available at the author's website. Sadly, the author passed away in 2017, and the original website disappeared a short time later, to never be seen again (although you can still find a cache of it here). I feel it is very important to preserve this treasure trove of information, and so I have decided to post it here so that a lifetime of knowledge may not be lost to time. I would like to believe that the author would have approved of this posting.
Ed Covington was born May 18, 1931, in Flint, Michigan. After earning his BS and MS in Physics from Michigan State University, Ed began his career at General Electric (GE) Research Laboratory in Schenectady, NY. His GE career was interrupted by two years of service in the U.S. Army, after which he entered the GE Research Laboratory Training Program in Schenectady. In 1960 he moved to GE's Lighting group at Nela Park in East Cleveland, Ohio, where he worked in research and engineering until retiring in 1992. Early electric lighting was a passion of Ed's; he collected light bulbs and wrote about the early history of the electric lighting industry and many other topics.
Download PDF1886 The Edison Electric Light, The Legal and Commercial Status (detail of patent infringements) New York, New York 1890 Edison Lamp Co., Catalog and Price List, Harrison, New Jersey 1891 United Edison Manufacturing Co., Lamp Bases, New York, New York 1895 Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Co., Sawyer-Man Lamps, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 1912 Edison Mazda Lamps For Standard Lighting Service, dec-1912, Schenectady, New York