Light Show: 1925

Reminds me of when David Letterman visited "Just Bulbs" and "Just Shades."

One of many Google hits for the Dim-A-Lite fixture:

http://www.edisonian.com/p011f001.htm

There are stores that look like this today, although without the flashlight counter. It must have been a bonanza in 1925 when electric power was firmly situated in major cities. This type of store filled a need for home lighting and probably installed as well as sold these fixtures. The days of a light bulb hanging from a single wire was coming to an end and properly installed lighting equipment were becoming the norm. The smaller towns came into play as well. The far rural areas really didn't get theirs until the 1930's with government help, like the TVA, and there were probably many areas that didn't get power until well after WWII. The Emerson Radio catalog had "farm radios" as late as the 1950s. A farm radio was an AM set that worked on a storage battery that was charged by a car battery. In the 1970s a couple came into my store looking for such a radio but they weren't available and he settled for a Zenith portable radio that worked on D cells for a fairly long time. The man and his wife lived on a ranch in Wyoming, with no electricity, he looked great in a suit, necktie and cowboy hat, his very plain wife appeared to be a generation older.

What a nice selection. Notice the assortment of "electric torches" (flashlights) in the display case on the left. I'd like to buy some of these fixtures to put in my home today.