Hirsch Electric Cap Lamp
Hirsch Electric Cap Lamp
Usage conditions apply
- 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
- 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
- ID Number
- AG.MHI-MN-8154
- accession number
- 239148
- catalog number
- MHI-MN-8154
- Credit Line
- Mary R. Wheat
- See more items in
- Work and Industry: Mining
- Work
- Industry & Manufacturing
- Grant Wheat Collection
- Mining Lamps
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
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