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Street Lamps
Choose
the element of 'Lighting - Street Lamps' above
to link directly to that page
after reading the introduction below.
Introduction to
Street Lamps
Street lamps are of course
the root product of William Sugg & Co. From the founding of the
Company, lighting the streets by gas was the primary aim. Until the
concept of gas for lighting, the only light available in the streets at
night was either moonlight, burning wood or tarred material in beacons
or cressets and candles or oil lamps. As villages grew into towns
and towns into cities so the need for extending the activities of the
day, especially as the days shortened into winter, became steadily more
significant. Whilst a village might simply 'hibernate' as the days
grew shorter and the tasks on the land reduced, the cities needed to
keep going as the tasks became less and less directly associated with
the land.
The word 'lantern' is a corruption or development of the word 'lanthorn'
which described the transparent material made from horn which provided the
earliest form of glazing. 'Lantern' is also the correct name for
what is however commonly known as a gas 'lamp'. (In modern parlance a
'lamp' is a light bulb and the structure or container in which a lamp is
located is a 'luminaire'.)
The lantern section has
been broken down into:
'Early Lamps' which are really developments of the oil lamp - and
how they were improved. At this stage all the 'lamps' will have open
flame burners.
'Large Lanterns' illustrates how the demand for improved
illumination led to the development of the truly large lantern, made as
such to
provide sufficient space and ventilation for the large open flame burners necessary
to achieve the required level of lighting.
The famous and surely iconic 'Windsor Lamp', recognised and
reproduced all over the world, was the first lantern developed by
William Sugg in 1898 specifically for the incandescent mantle burner and is
joined by a range of decorative lanterns
developed for the gas mantle, several surviving to the present day. Many
of these lanterns have taken on the title of 'heritage' or 'traditional'
lanterns and have come fully up to date with high performance electrical
light sources. I feel sure William Sugg would have been impressed!
The 'Rochester & Littleton' 'Shadowless type of fixture sold
in huge numbers in the first half of the 20th century and have also
become the iconic shape of 'modern' heritage electric street light.
The 8000 Lamp development to replace the 'old' lanterns with a
scientifically designed 'modern' economical fixture with the highest
efficiency that could be achieved using conventional low pressure
mantles.
The London & the Southport Street Lamps show the development of
high performance multiple burners and the rectangular 'Supervia' mantle adaptation.
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