Description

This object is a glass tube with a round, bulbous end that tapers into a thinner neck. There are four electrodes on the bulbous part of the tube, and two others on the end of the neck.

When Edgerton donated this large, now-broken tube to the MIT Museum, he labeled it "First Mercury Strobe Lamp Made at MIT." In his notebook, he refers to "tube #448141," made on March 17, 1927; this may be that tube. It appears on the left of a photograph of an Edgerton stroboscopic apparatus from about 1931. See also the laboratory notebook entry from May 17, 1931. That tube took a nighttime aerial photograph from 2,000 feet of MIT in 1941.