Artifact #10

DISCOVERED

After a Century in Darkness

Edison Trial Evidence Collection

"U.S. Patent Office Declaration of Interference, Sawyer and Man vs. Edison"

Edison Patent Model Lamp No. 10

Lamp label - No. 13

Lamp No. 10 - Patent Model Exhibit No. 13

"U.S. Patent Office Declaration of Interference, Sawyer and Man vs. Edison"

1881 was a very busy year for the 34 year old Edison. He applied for several dozen patents on his electric lamp system. He moved his office from Menlo Park to new offices at 65 Fifth Avenue, New York. Although his time was being diverted by the heavy demands of his technology infringement legal battle with Sawyer and Man, this was also the year Edison crossed the Atlantic to set up an impressive display of his electric incandescent lamp system at the great Paris Electrical Exhibition. His efforts were rewarded with the Paris Exhibit's top honors. In Statesman like fashion, Sir Joseph W. Swan honored Edison with a public congratulations. Before the year was out Edison would also finish setting up the Edison Lamp Works at Harrison, N. J. and organize the Edison Machine Works in New York. With his manufacturing greatly expanded he set out to make all the various parts for his electric incandescent lamp generating system for Pearl Street station. Pearl Street was his first permanent central power station, capable of supplying 500 customers. Although Hiram Maxim beat Edison by installing the first* commercial incandescent lighting system in New York in 1880, Edison's Pearl Street Station became the largest incandescent electric lighting installation in the city when Edison connected the switch to start service on September 4, 1882.

Lamp 10 is a Patent Model made at Edison's laboratory in Menlo Park. This lamp was made in 1881 to support Edison's legal defense against the Sawyer and Man lamp in the Patent Interference Declaration issued by the Patent Commissioner on September 23, 1880. Note the importance of this lamp is marked by the printed number "13" on a diamond shaped paper courtroom exhibit label. The rarity of this lamp is unsurpassed. It has a "spiral" filament shape made at a time when Edison had already moved on to his famous bamboo "horseshoe" and "hairpin" shaped filaments. This lamp was made strictly as a Patent Model, the spiral bamboo being only blackened with soot, not carbonized by heat as would be the case for a lamp destined to be put into service. The artifact is otherwise made precisely in accordance with the description in Edison's fundamental lamp patent #223,898. This lamp has a unique legacy, no lamp of this design known has the unique provenance documentation to match this piece of early electric lighting history.

This Edison lamp has two paper labels. The label located near the evacuation tip (tit) is a quartered court square with a hand written "10" in the center, the number coinciding with its position in the pigeon hole compartments of the wooden box. An older courtroom exhibit label is located near the base of the lamp and is marked in dark ink with the number "13" .

NOTE: the lamp globe still shows glue marks where other labels were once fastened.

This lamp also shows the remnant of a fingerprint on the glass near the center of the filament stem.

2007 is this lamp's 126 th. Anniversary

Go To the Collection Group Exhibit

* In the autumn of 1880, the Maxim incandescent lighting system illuminated the reading room and vault of the Mercantile Safe Deposit Company in the Equitable Life Insurance building at 120 Broadway (New York Post December 21, 1880 - "Evolution of the Electric Incandescent Lamp" F. L. Pope, © 1894, pg 79).

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