Re: How far we\'ve come . .
That`s one of the 1929 anniversary lamps produced by General Electric for the "Lights Golden Jubilee" 50th anniversary of Tom Edison`s first commercially successful lamp. Functioning but otherwise decorative, it has a ~110v carbon filament that can be compared to original Edison-company sign lamps of the 1900s, which back then were rated 3CP. Now I`m not sure if that`s point candlepower, mean-spherical-candlepower or what. In the early days standards had yet to be set and there are several different ratings used by manufacturers in different countries.
In great shape with the box, gold label and everything they can be worth a couple hundred $$ but one like that, $25-50 would be more reasonable. Funny thing is, not long after they were released, the Great Depression started and as a result they did not sell as many as they would if the Wall Street Crash hadn`t happened. Made them quite rare for a while, though since Ebay, quite a lot have turned up.
There were actually many different styles of those lamps made over the years for different anniversaries, by different companies, the last in the 70s by GE had a plastic base with no electrical connection, but with an otherwise working (and removable to fit in a live socket for demonstration purposes) replica of the 1900s 16CP 2-loop carbon lamps. They are a bit of a pet interest of mine, I have several here. Currently:
That`s most of the common ones but there are still one or two notable omissions, especially the Westinghouse Stopper and the 1954 GE 75th-anniversary replica.
And
here is a topic I started on the Antique Bulb Forums to gather more information about them, more details there, if anyone`s interested.
Nice find!
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