Light bulbs

That's what I'm cataloging now. A big (boxes & boxes) collection of light bulbs that was donated to the museum years ago.

Yes, people collect light bulbs and there are websites for people who collect light bulbs. Really. And they're surprisingly interesting. It;s not as if Swan & Edison sat down on days and said "These lamp things, I suck, I should invent a light bulb". There's all the variations & innovations & dead ends that went into the development of electric lamp and then the experimenting afterwards (what to make the filaments from so they'd last longer, give out more light; changes in structure, manufacture, shape, materials, vacuum vs gas filled, colour).

I didn't know that gas lights had a resurgence in the 1890s either. I just assumed that once electric lights became available they were gradually adopted everywhere and gas was only in use because the users hadn't got around to updating. But nope, the gas mantle was developed which solved some of the problems with gas lighting and electric lights still had many impracticalities. Not to mention arc lights. And that the gas used for gas lighting for much of the period in which it was popular was actually coal gas, not natural gas.

All very interesting. But then I'm a writer, everything is interesting :\