Tuesday, April 18, 2023

Lightbulbs wanted, 1916


Dominion was founded by Isabelle Frampton, formerly a foreman (foreperson)- at 22 years of age!- of the lighting department of the Packard Electric. When Packard decided to get out of the lightbulb reconditioning business Isabelle founded Dominion to continue the service. I'd like to see the process!

4 comments:

  1. Fascinating woman and she definitely wore the pants in the family. Here's a bio, and her patents are in the Canadian patent database under her husband's name (HAWKEN, JAMES PHELPS) because that's how it had to be at the time (unfortunately they're poor scans and difficult to read). Maybe the only reason she got married was to have a male name for all the paperwork.

    https://stcatharinesmuseumblog.com/2016/03/08/isabella-frampton-hawken-the-original-girlboss/

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  2. Why would they want burned out bulbs?
    I know there was a World War going on, but was tungsten so valuable that the tiny filaments were worth recycling?

    Jack from Illinois
    Jack from Illinois

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  3. From what I read, that indeed was the reason for including him in the company. She must have been a force of nature.

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  4. Jack, I wondered if the tiny bits of tungsten were being recycled (and they probably were) but the main reason was they rebuilt the bulbs!

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