Object Details
- Description
- The Hirsch Electric Mine Lamp Company of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania manufactured this electric cap lamp around 1911. The battery is enclosed in metal case, with a flexible cord that runs to the lamp that was worn on the miner’s helmet. The battery could be recharged at the end of the day for the next full day. The label attached to this lamp reads “HIRSCH Lamp 1911/1912. This lamp was carried by Grant Wheat as a demonstrator."
- Electric cap lamp inventor Grant Wheat’s personal collection of mining lamps was donated to the museum in 1962. Many of these objects were depicted in his “Story of Underground Lighting” published in the “Proceedings of the Illinois Mining Institute” in 1945. This lamp was the 35th object in his chronological development of underground lighting, which he described as the “first Hirsch electric cap lamp showing safety strip of glass in headpiece.”
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Credit Line
- Mary R. Wheat
- ID Number
- AG.MHI-MN-8154
- accession number
- 239148
- catalog number
- MHI-MN-8154
- Object Name
- lamp, hirsch, mining
- Measurements
- battery: 6 in x 3 7/8 in; 15.24 cm x 9.906 cm
- wire: 33 in; 83.82 cm
- light: 3 in x 3 in x 4 1/2 in; 7.62 cm x 7.62 cm x 11.43 cm
- See more items in
- Work and Industry: Mining
- Mining Lamps
- Work
- Industry & Manufacturing
- Grant Wheat Collection
- National Museum of American History
- Record ID
- nmah_872662
- GUID (Link to Original Record)
- https://n2t.net/ark:/65665/ng49ca746a6-d821-704b-e053-15f76fa0b4fa
