The William J. Hammer Historical Collection of Incandescent Electric Lamps

The Hammer Historical Collection of Incandescent Electric Lamps is probably the most complete collection that described the state of the art during Edison's time. Perhaps it is the most comprehensive collection in the world.

William Hammer was one of the early associates of Thomas Edison and he had a distinguished career. He started to collect lamps as they were developed in the Edison laboratory from the earliest days and continued this activity for several years. Not only were Edison lamps obtained, but lamps from other inventors were also added to his collection.

Hammer exhibited his lamps at various times. His exhibit in 1882 at the International Electrical Exposition at the Crystal Palace, London, England, garnered him a special silver medal. The exhibit of his collection at the St. Louis Exposition of 1904 earned "the Grand Prize." In 1906 Hammer was awarded the "Elliott Cresson" gold medal from the Franklin Institute.

The Hammer Historical Collection of Incandescent Electric Lamps was on exhibit in the Headquarters of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers in the Engineering Societies Building, 29 West 39th Street, New York City for many years; the information given here corresponds to its existence mainly in the year 1913. Prior to being exhibited in the Engineering Societies Building the collection was held in storage by Mr. Samuel Insull of Chicago. In 1913 the collection was displayed in five large glass cases. At that time the collection was owned by the Edison Association of Illuminating Companies. Part of the collection had been purchased by the General Electric Company and donated to the Edison Association.

Case No. 1 contained lamps that represented "the foundation of the art, embracing the initial work of Edison, Swan, Maxim, Lane-Fox, deChangy, deLodyguine, Sawyer, Bernstein, Müller, Akester, Nothomb, Crookes, Swinburne, Kurtzgen, Siemens, Gerard, Boehm, Greinert-Friederich, Latimer and Cruto, from 1878 to 1883."

Case No. 2 contained lamps that represented "the development of the art under Thomas Alva Edison from 1878 to 1913, supplementing the fundamental steps in his work shown in Case No.1."

Case No. 3 contained lamps that represented "the development of the art under the workers contemporaneous with Edison all over the world, from 1883 to 1893, supplementing the fundamental steps shown in Case No.1."

Case No. 4 contained lamps that represented "the development of the art under workers contemporaneous with Edison all over the world, from 1893 to 1903, supplementing the lamps in Cases Nos.1 and 3, and including special regulating, reflecting, advertising, sign and novelty lamps."

Case No. 5 contained lamps that represented "the development of the art under the workers contemporaneous with Edison all over the world, from 1900 to 1913, embracing other than carbon filament lamps, such as Nernst, Tantalum, Helion, Crawford-Voelker, Langhans, Hopfelt, Osmium and Tungsten lamps, and certain gas, vapor, radium, cathode-ray and other phosphorescent lamps which serve to point the way towards 'cold light'."

In addition to individual pictures of lamps in the Hammer Collection, this site also contains photographs of Hammer display cases that existed at two different times, 1904 and 1913. Because of the large size of four of these photographs, with their rather long downloading times, they are not shown with the text but can be viewed by clicking onto the links below; total downloading time can be several minutes.

A picture can be enlarged by clicking on the box that will appear when the mouse arrow is moved from outside the picture boundary to the inside from outside the lower right hand corner boundary; the arrow must be inside the picture boundary to obtain the enlargement box. After viewing a link simply click "Back" on your browser to return to this page.

Edison Lamps Developed by 1904
Lamps Developed by Other Workers by 1904
Combination of Edison and Other Lamps
Photographs of Hammer Lamp Display Cases, 1913

During the time period May 6-17, 1930 the Hammer collection was removed from Room No. 616 of the Engineering Societies Building. Each item was assigned a transfer number, crated and the entire collection was shipped to the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan; it has remained there until this day (June, 2000). An inventory was taken in 1930 that lists the assigned transfer number, any markings on the lamp, the condition of the lamp and the text on the cards displayed by Hammer. Although the transfer numbers run from one to 1031, the collection contains fewer items, due, in part, probably, to unintentional breakage over time. The lamps contained in Case No. 1 have transfer numbers that range from one to 109. Those lamps in Case No. 2 were numbered 110 to 357. The lamps in Case No. 3 were numbered 358 to 536. The lamps in Case No. 4 were numbered 782 to 1031 and those lamps in Case No. 5 were numbered 537 to 781. The total number of lamps in each case being: Case 1, 109; Case 2, 248; Case 3, 179; Case 4, 250 and Case 5, 245.

Hammer spent countless hours organizing the lamps in the described manner and his setup arranged the lamps in a natural, meaningful way. However, we no longer have the opportunity to see the collection in this arrangement and a different listing for this web site was decided on. The lamps are listed here chronologically according to date of manufacture, and with the transfer numbers arranged in increasing order. Thus, the lamps are listed more or less as they were developed in time.

In the following, some details of lamps from a majority of the collection are given. Only those lamps were considered that could be identified as to the date of manufacture. The first number given is the year of manufacture and the number after the hyphen is the transfer number as assigned in 1930. About 945 lamps are considered.

Hammer mounted nearly every lamp in a wooden pedestal, with the unintentional result that certain features of the lamp, such as the base, are hidden. During a recent (May 2000) visit to the Ford Museum the writer took photographs of three lamps that exist without such pedestals. These lamps were: a 1885 Diehl induction lamp, No. 523; a 1900 Bäckström lamp, No. 1023, manufactured by Seely & Taylor; a 1885 Vitrite Luminoid lamp, No. 997. These images are shown below.

From an Archive Room at Nela Park in Cleveland the writer also had access to 20 negatives of individual Hammer lamps. A photograph was taken of each negative, in the sunlight, with the background being the noon day cloudless sky; this was accomplished with a Sony MVC-FD81 Digital Mavica camera. Then a "positive" was obtained through use of a scanner and Adobe PhotoDeluxe 2.0. These images are also shown below. Although the results leave much to be desired, the writer felt that the viewer might appreciate seeing a "close-up" of individual Hammer lamps, as originally displayed.

The William J. Hammer Historical Collection of Incandescent Electric Lamps