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17 Jun 2002
The owner of one of the world's largest light bulb collections died last week.
Hugh Francis Hicks, who built up a collection of more than 60 000 light bulbs, has sadly passed away. Having a life-long fascination with bulbs, his stockpile is said to be one of most important light bulb collections in the US.
Hicks, a dentist in Baltimore, US, housed his collection in a private museum, which he called the Mount Vernon Museum of Incandescent Lighting. Opened in 1964, the museum welcomed some 6 000 visitors a year and has approximately 400 bulbs on display.
Central to his collection was the rise of Thomas Edison's electric light bulb. Hicks' museum is home to several of the first bulbs that Edison developed and handled 122 years ago.
Other specimens include a lamp from the Statue of Liberty's original torch and a headlamp from Adolf Hitler's Mercedes-Benz. The largest bulb in the assortment is four foot high whilst the smallest, a light used in wiring spacecraft, can only be seen through a microscope.
The family hopes to keep the collection intact and in Baltimore.
Author
Jacqueline Hewett is news reporter on Optics.org and Opto & Laser Europe magazine.
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