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Fagan Collection

 

 

An allegory of the role of chemistry from Abraham
Cressy Morrison's Man in a Chemical World.

 

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The Richard F. and Mary L. Fagan Collection provides one of America's most comprehensive sources of information on the history of electric lighting.

An informed and dedicated collector, Richard Fagan gathered all kinds material relevant to the history of electric lighting in America. Nearly every kind of literature needed by someone writing about the revolution in electrical lighting between 1870 and 1950 is represented.

The collection includes the theoretical literature that preceded the invention of the light-bulb, technical journals such as the Transactions of the Illuminating Engineering Society, and popular literature such Park Benjamin's The Age of Electricity (New York, 1886), as well as trade publications like Juice and ephemera such as Architecture of the Night, published by General Electric to advertise and celebrate the lighting effects achieved by Art Deco architects and lighting designers.

The materials gathered by the Fagans will be as valuable for social historians and historians of architecture and interior design as they will for historians of technology.

Of particular importance are some two-hundred manufacturer's product catalogues, nearly all of which were issued in ring binders and have for the most part not been collected or preserved in libraries.

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