GIANT ELECTRIC LIGHT BULB

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 72, 18 December 1937, Page 22

GIANT ELECTRIC LIGHT BULB

Memorial To Thomas Edison

The giant electric light bulb, 14ft. tall, which will glow as a land beacon atop the 100,000 dollars Edison" Memorial Tower at Menlo Park, New Jersey, has just been completed by the Corning Glass Works. It took a crew of expert glassworkers eight months to complete this emblematic diadem fop the tower, the task of laying the model out into curved “orange-peel like” sections consuming the greater part of the elapsed time.

The 150 ft. beacon will commemorate the invention of the incandescent electric light by Thomas Alva Edison, who in 1879 sent a rough sketch of his idea to Corning, asking that a bulb of -glass of definite dimensions be blown. This original glass bulb, enclosing Edison’s carbon filament, became the world’s first practical electric light. Corning’s contribution to the memorial commemorating the event is likewise notable since the 14ft. bulb Is the first globular cast job in the history of the glass industry. In preparing the bulb for shipment more than 60001 b. of amber-tinted Pyrex glass were fitted over a steel skeleton fashioned In a Bronx iron ■-■■■works and shipped to Corning. The bulb itself consists of 164 pieces of . cast glass in a 21n. diamond pattern, and is Oft. Gin. in diameter. The combined bulb and steel skeleton weigh six tons. ■ “ When finally set up the giant bulb will be transformed into a gleaming tower at night, casting its rays for

miles about the surrounding Jersey countryside. The inside of the bulb will be outfitted with 960 incandescent electric lights with a 24in. reflector to be utilised as an aeroplane beacon. The steel framework of the tower, which is to be enclosed in concrete arid limestone, was first erected in 1929 on the exact Site of the work bench at which Thomas Edison laboured over his first incandescent light bulb just half a century before. A model bulb enclosed in a glass case was Installed in a base of the tower and was linked with current from four independent sources so that Its light would never be extinguished. When a bolt of lightning struck the tower last August a mass of tangled steel and scaffolding fell to the ground. The glass case enclosing the bulb was shattered and buried in debris but the bulb itself was left unbroken and the light was found still burning. This model bulb was also made at Corning. To guard against any future electrical storms the present structure has been fitted with stainless steel lightning arresters, and has been tested against wind velocities up to 230 miles an hour. . The memorial is the gift of William Slocum Barstow, president of the Thomas Alva Edison Foundation, who provided for the erection of the concrete sliaft on behalf of the Edison Pioneers, an organisation composed of past and present Edison Company employees.