MIT Museum

Major collection: Science & Technology
Named collection: Harold E. Edgerton Collection
Object type: flash lamp
Maker: Date made: circa 1935
Materials: glass; metal; mercury
Measurements: 12 in x 3/4 in
Nomenclature: photographic tools and equipment - high speed photographic equipment
Classification: tools and equipment

This later tube has a completely different design than the first of its type (see 1983.088.054). Doc and his associate, Kenneth Germeshausen and Herbert Grier, made strobe lamps in all shapes and sizes - as Edgerton's sketches in his laboratory notebooks illustrate (see the notebook entry from May 17, 1931). They also experimented with pumping different gases into the lamps, in addition to the mercury used in the first tubes.

1983.088.055