In 1962 the writer was employed at the Lighting Research and Development Operation, General Electric Lamp Division, Nela Park, Cleveland, Ohio. In February of that year an article appeared in the GE News about my hobby of collecting early incandescent lamps. A Lamp Division retiree, George Petzinger, saw the article and contacted me. He had his own story to tell, a part of which is now related to the viewer.

In the year 1957 the GE News had printed a story about Mr. Petzinger and his hobby - that of collecting materials used in the making of carbon filaments. In 1957 Mr. Petzinger was 82 years of age. At that time he had been retired for 12 years. He had started his 42 years of service with GE in 1903. GE had started a filament department and Petzinger began as a helper. Most of his career was spent supervising the manufacture of carbon filaments.

George Petzinger started to accumulate some of the materials used in filament manufacture and subsequently displayed them. The picture below shows his displays.

Mr. Petzinger presented many of his remaining bamboo and silk filaments to me in the hope it would help to perpetuate an interest in early lamp technology. the following photo shows some of these planed filaments, starting bamboo strips and some silk cord.