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255 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 2008
He had about fifteen hundred bulbs and, the nature of this strange and fragile passion aside, seemed to be fairly normal. He did, for instance, often light up his bulbs to admire their beauty; others would regard this as sacrilege, just as collectors of rare records would never dream of actually playing them. But Tye loved the varying glows from the different filaments – the carbonised vegetable material that appeared in Edison's day at the end of the nineteenth century, the tantalum drawn wire and then tungsten that characterised bulbs from the early twentieth century. Tye wore quite large smoked glasses and had a round balding head, and he looked like he was turning into a light bulb himself, the way owners come to resemble their pets. I'd like to think this was a common trait – the collectors of Bernard Leach pottery soon looking brown and earthy, and collectors of antiquarian books appearing dank and troubled by their spines (p 105)