The Lighting Time Table

To read the entire tutorial, you can just click on the first link and then continue to the next section at the bottom of each page. Or, you can select links below of interest to you.

PRE 1900 SECTION

Overcoming Obstacles
About Early Electric Lighting, Generators, Arc Lamps, The First Edison Socket, Menlo Park, etc.
The First Fixtures
About The Start Of The First Incandescent Lighting Fixtures
Light Reflection
About Early Light Bulbs And Candle Power vs. WATTS
Edison-Bergmann
About Sigmund Bergmann And The Start Of Bergmann And Company Lighting Fixtures
Lighting Break Down
A Quick Break Down Of Different Lighting Time Periods
Styles 1881 to 1884
Bergmann Fixtures And Styles
Other Pre-1888 Styles
About Early Companies That Sold Lighting Systems And The Fixtures That They Sold With Their Lighting Systems
The U.S. Elect. Co.
The United States Electric Company History And Early Items
The Brush Elect. Co.
The Brush Electric Company History And Early Items
Thomson-Houston
The Thomson-Houston Electric Company History And Early Items
Westinghouse
About The Westinghouse Manufacturing Company History And Early Mergers
Mid 1880's Styles
About The Start Of Electrical Supply Houses and how new lighting styles came about
Pre 1900 Sockets
About Early Light Sockets And How To Tell The Difference
1887 New Items
1888 New Items
1890 New Items
1891 New Items
1892 New Items
1893 New Items
1894-1896 Items
1897 New Items
1898 New Items
1899 New Items
Above are catalog items sold in different years. There is no space to duplicate items, so only new and unique items from each year are shown. You would need to view the catalogs for yourself to be complete as I am only highlighting items. You can view catalogs here.

EXTRA INFO
Victor Shade Holder
About The Victor Shade Holder, Atwood And The Standard Holder

I.P. Frink 1899 Items
About Frink & Wheeler
New Wheeler Inverted
Three Links About Mirror Reflector Manufacturers And Their Items And History.
Wheeler Reflector Co.
NEW - A history of The Wheeler Reflector Company and tips on how to tell if mirror has been replaced on a shade

Early Desk Lamps
Some Help In Telling Them Apart

Vitrite And Luminoid
About The Vitrite Holders And Early Vitrite History

Brush-Swan Holder
About Brush-Swan Shade Holders

Cord Balls
My cord pendant adjuster project, as well as a good history about them.

POST 1900 SECTION

About 1900 Styles
This section covers a basic into into the 1900 section covering information about the 1899 transition, electrical code changes, lighting influence, sharing and licensing of patents and then into the new section of electrical specialty manufacturers,

Electrical Specialty Manufacturers
Harvey Hubbell
This section covers some early history periods of pre Hubbell-Grier, Hubbell-Grier, Harvey Hubbell, Hubbell Company. It also covers a number of items that helped change lighting styles,

Benjamin
This section covers some early history periods for the Benjamin Electric MFG. Co, as well as a small section on Dale and The Federal Electric Company
Dale
Federal Electric

This post 1900 section continues to be under current construction

Please Check Back.

I will start this Bergmann socket section with a some basics about Bergmann sockets, so that you may easier understand this section as we go through it.

To get a more detailed description of the parts below, click on the text next to the picture which will automatically take you to that information line below the pictures.

After reading the top line, click back on your browser and then click on the next picture that you wish more information on.



Skinny Bergmann
The older Bergmann sockets were not as wide in diameter, as the more fat Bergmann sockets which came out later. It is also easy to tell the difference between a skinny and fat socket design at a glance by the screws used. The skinny sockets used rectangle screws to hold the cap. They also have a narrow ornate rib above the end of the socket tube. The later fat sockets have much more thick plain rib as you can compare in the examples above.

Short Skinny Bergmann
The short skinny socket is just as above, only slightly shorter. The difference in size is caused by less room for a shade holder below the ornate rib.

Fat Bergmann
A fat Bergmann socket was a newer design, in which the diameter of the socket became much wider.
The Fat Bergmann uses a new twist lock cap style with round screw heads. The ornate rib was also replaced with a thick plain rib.

Rotary Switch
There were two different rotary switches used in Bergmann sockets. One was used in a skinny shell and the other in a fat Bergmann shell. These rotary switches are easy to identify at a glance, because the turn key will be at the top of the socket directly under the cap. All other Bergmann sockets have the turn key coming out of the socket shell about half way down the the shell as shown in the pictures above.

Acorn Socket
The Acorn sockets were a design that was shaped like an Acorn. This socket line branches down to Edison General Electric, as well as The General Electric Company, which both manufactured their own designs and improvements of the Acorn down through the years.

Push Socket
The Push button socket was a Bergmann design of a push socket, which included a lever to release the switch. This socket is also sometimes called the "Push/Pull" socket.

Cast Brass Keys
Bergmann's cast brass key design was unique to Bergmann sockets and some Edison General Electric sockets. The last EGE catalog to show these keys (or sockets using the keys) for sale, was the September 1st 1891 (with update price list for January 15th 1892). Standard brass keys are about an inch long, but extra long keys were also made for special fixture needs. By the time General Electric took over in 1892, these sockets and keys were no longer sold.

Quarter Moon Cut-Out Cap
The quarter moon cut-out can be found on most skinny Bergmann sockets. Though it was only needed for the rotary skinny sockets, Bergmann only manufactured one cap for all. Once the Rotary socket came out, the quarter moon cap became the cap for all other skinny sockets. It is noteworthy that the fat Bergmann sockets (including the new fat rotary socket) no longer used the quarter moon cut-out on any of these new designs.

Fiber Innards
Innards is a term used for the inside of the socket. The term is interchangeable with other terms such as guts, switches, insides, etc.. The term fiber innards is reference to the material that the insides are made from and in this case vulcanized fiber. Fiber colors included red, brown, white and black.

Porcelain Innards
This is the same as above, but with the innards being made out of porcelain.

Socket Collar
Bergmann used a screw on collar at the end of the socket tube to insulate the Edison threads from the socket shell. In most cases these collars were made of different fibers, hard rubber, composition or porcelain.

Rectangle Screws
Rectangle screws were used on early socket caps. On these caps you will also find rectangle holes for them. When using rectangle screws, you only need to turn the screw a half turn to remove the cap since the screw is a bit smaller then the rectangle hole.

Moving Tongue
The Moving Tongue sockets contained an early switch invention unique to Bergmann sockets. The center contact (being the tongue) laid flat until the key was turned. When turned the tongue would move up and make contact with the bulb, thus "The Moving Tongue".

The Bergmann no. 1 socket (as like the Edison sockets before it), still use wood for the main cylindrical block.
This socket incorporates a plate (thin round disk) of vulcanized fiber, which is set on the wooden socket and what the center contact attaches to. Other then this small plate, this socket is entirely made of wood and covered with a brass shell. This makes the no. 1 Bergmann not only the last Edison socket that used wood as an insulator, but a kind of "missing link" between 'Edison sockets' and the common 'Bergmann sockets' that we are used to seeing today.

If you are looking at this socket from a picture or illustration in a catalog, from the outside it would be easy to mistake it for a Bergmann moving tongue socket.

Here are a couple tips to make an ID at a glance.

First look at the socket key where it goes into the shell. You will notice that the key is much thicker in diameter then other skinny Bergmann sockets. If you compare the Bergmann no. 1 on your right, to the socket on your left you will notice this fat key which no other Bergmann socket will have. You can also notice the width of the key hole is much wider too.
Also, as long as you are looking here, also look at the cap above the key hole. The cap on the moving tongue and other skinny Bergmann's (except real early moving tongue sockets) have a half moon cut-out. While the cut-out on the cap was not needed for the moving tongue, there was another socket at the time that did require it. This was the first rotary switch socket. Since the key shaft was so close to the top of the top of the socket, it required the cut-out. It was then added to moving tongue sockets so that only one cap needed to be manufactured. This made it easier in the way that there was no need to manufacture or keep track of two different caps. Caps for skinny Bergmann's without the half-moon, are really rare. If you see one of these caps on a skinny shell, it would either be this wood socket, or a REALLY early moving tongue socket that we call the LAVA version (because it used lava as an insulator). You can also take note that this socket uses wood screws, and a screw in the place of a rivet for the key hole cover. The last point in the identification would be that the socket would likely have rectangle screw heads. The socket shown above has rectangle screw holes in the cap, which would suggest that this socket had it's rectangle screws replaced with round head screws at some point in time. All of the illustrations that I have seen of this socket also used rectangle screws.

The patent for this socket was applied for on October 9th 1882 and approved on May 13th 1884. It was assigned patent number 298,658.

Prior to the patent being approved, (in the circa 1883 Bergmann catalog (broken link) that we talked about (on page number 3 linked here) there is a drawing of this socket that gives some additional patent information.

This catalog provides the patent dates of December 27, 1881 (which was the Edison patent for the screw shell), May 2nd 1882 (which was the Bergmann patent for the center contact and Canadian patent January 10th 1883, which was (the Canadian patent for the center contact patent no. 16095, and assigned to E.H. Johnson. (This information is deducted from the January 10th patent date also being used in the Bergmann catalog for the Acorn socket and Standard Receptacle). E.H. Johnson was also the assignor to another Bergmann & Co. Canadian patent, as well as other later Canadian electrical patents as seen here.

If the patent information was kept updated, the absence of the May 13th 1884 patent, could tells us that the Bergmann catalog would be no later then May or June 1884, since the socket had not yet been approved. We also now know (from the patent information above) that the catalog had to have been published some time after January 10th 1883.

Please also take note that in the Bergmann catalog, the socket is pictured with the standard design for the turn key.

In the 1883 The Edison Light (broken link) and an Electrical World article dated September 1st 1883 (broken link) the socket is shown with a different (possibly older) turn key design. The illustration in the Electrical World was taken directly from the Edison Light (so we can not use it for dating). Also, we can not say for sure that this socket was ever sold with this key design until more evidence is produced.

This socket was also published in another publication (broken link) in 1882 (Electric Lighting With Instructions For The Proper Inspection Of Equipments) which shows a key design (on page 54 of the book) shown here left and right. This key design is much closer to the standard design. This book would have had to be published some time after June 13th 1882, since on page 30 it shows an item that is marked with this patent date. The book also includes an electrical code dated May 25th 1882.

So here we have the common key design being used in June of 1882 and an Edison Light showing another key design in 1883. It is still possible that the 1883 Electric Light used an older illustration, but, with a patent applied for date of the socket at October 9th 1882; And the new common design being used in a publication dated June 13th 1882 (and we need to account time for preparation of the book); would make for a very short lived design if it had actually ever been sold to the public.

The socket shell for this Bergmann No. 1, has the patent dates shown below marked on the shell:

DEC.27.1881 No. 251,554 & 251,596 (first Edison screw-thread)
MAY.2.1882 No. 257,277 (center contact for Edison-base)
JAN.10.1883 No. 16095 (Canadian patent for the center contact)
FEB.12.1884 No. 293,552 (acorn socket and shade holder)
MAY.13.1884 298,658 - This socket (turnkey socket with wood innards)

The first version of the Bergmann socket no. 3 (the moving tongue), will have much in common with this socket. For this reason, I will include more of the patent history in that section

Starting with this example, Bergmann started putting patent dates on their sockets. However, there may be a version of this socket missing one or all patent dates. This is because this socket example has its own patent date of May 13th 1884 stamped on the shell. This patent was applied for on Oct. 9, 1882, which means that for 19 months there was another shell that was being used that could not have had the May 13th patent date on it (since it did not yet exist). It is the same for the moving tongue socket (Bergmann No. 3). While the early moving tongue was still in the patent applied for stage, it only had dates up to May 13th 1884. After the patent was approved, the moving tongue shells had their patent date of Jan. 20 1885. New patent dates were added and removed to the moving tongue line up of sockets through the years, so it only makes sense to cover all of the dates in one place. I will add a link here, when that section is complete.

To continue the socket research to the next part:
Click Here http://www.antiquesockets.com/bergmann5.html