Bulbs

It would seem that anybody who wishes to see a feather duster will, in a few years, be out of luck. Not so the person who feels a pang of nostalgia for those huge old clear-glass light bulbs, with their spectacular coils of filament. The Society for Industrial Archeology has announced that its latest member is an unlikely institution that has been operating for over a decade—the Mount Vernon Museum of Incandescent Lighting, in Baltimore. Here the visitor can see the whole panoply of the history and development of the incandescent electric lamp. On display are six hundred bulbs—historical, miniature, decorative, and the longest and largest. These wonders represent only 20 percent of the museum’s collection, as the rest are out on loan to other institutions.