Lucas bicycle lamp - Silver King
Lucas bicycle lamp - Silver King - front view
Name/Title
Lucas bicycle lamp - Silver KingEntry/Object ID
2025.1.695Description
Bicycle lamp, made from tin-plated steel with a large lens and additional coloured glass inserts - 'jewels'. The lamp has an oil reservoir and requires a 3/4 inch wide wick.The lamp has the Lucas emblem on the top and the patent information on the mechanism that attaches the lamp to the bicycle - Jos. Lucas Ltd - Patented - Birmingham.Context
Joseph Lucas was born on April 12, 1834 in Birmingham, UK. At thirteen or fourteen Joseph was apprenticed to the silversmiths H. & G.R. Elkington who had pioneered the process of electroplating, on completing his apprenticeship in 1860 he chose to start his own small business selling buckets and shovels and the newly “discovered” paraffin (1859). It was this preoccupation with selling paraffin that led him into the manufacture and sale of lamps. In 1871 he started making and selling the 'Tom Bowling' ships lamp, which had been manufactured in the Tom Bowling lamp works but were patented by Lucas in 1875, when he took over the firm. His next major business development came after the advent of the new two wheeled bicycle, when he designed and sold lamps for bicycles. In 1878, Joseph’s first cycle lamp, for use with a Penny Farthing, was the famous “King of the Road” His second most famous lamp "The Silver King of the Road" or "Silver King" as it became known, appeared in 1885 and continued in production till 1936. The "Silver King" was also used by the military. Lucas continued to produce all kinds of lamps — hand (candle) lamps, police lamps, railway men’s lamps and lamps for horse riders. They also continued to manufacture and sell oil cans, cash boxes, letterboxes, cash tills, and sugar boxes, etc. Joseph Lucas died in 1902. The Lucas name continues to this day. The top of the lamp has the Lucas logo - the wheel, the lion and the flame emblem.Category
Bicycles, motor bikes, mechanical