Yesterday on my walk after work and before dinner I strolled into a lighting supply house just for kicks to see if they had anything weird in the way of wiring devices (the places run by Chinese guys in New York always seem to get a lot of off-the-cuff foreign stuff) I can add to my little collection.

I came out with a festoon lampholder, made by the old Eagle Electric company (now Cooper Wiring) with the inscription "PROCLAIM LIBERTY THROUGHOUT THE LAND..." all in capital letters molded all around the lower lip of the socket.

And to top if off....it looks a bit like a bell - narrow at the top where the wires pass through and flares out at the bottom around the screwshell. The steel hook at the top adds to the whole "bell look."

It's obviously not current manufacture since it was stamped Eagle USA instead of Cooper Mexico and the barcode sticker doesn't say "Made in Mexico."

Catalog number is 732.

Here's what I'm talking about (lifted from the Eagle Electric online catalogue):

[Linked Image from eagle-electric.com]

(too bad i don't have a digital camera so I could take a pic of the real thing)

I wonder who's idea was it to mold this into the socket? And WHY??? Who would read it or even notice it?

Maybe we'll never know...the designer responsible for coming up with Eagle's molds probably died 30 years ago or something. Lord knows the cosmetics of most of Eagle's products hasn't changed in ages. [Linked Image]

Still...it's kind of neat to see writing like that on something as mundane as a lampholder.

[This message has been edited by SvenNYC (edited 05-24-2003).]