This Guy No. 1 Bulb Snatcher
DETROIT (UP)—Charles B Sero, champion bulb snatcher; has 20,000 bulbs and no place to beep them.
"I've been collecting these bulb? for 46 years," he said. "But don't get me wrong; I don't want my own museum."
Sero wants to put his bulbs in an Edison Palace of Light, where each could be displayed individually with the name of the inventor, the materials used, and a complete explanation of the bulb.
"I want the collection to be used In an educational way," he said "I want them set up so they can be useful to anyone interested in electronics."
The bulbs that still burn, Sero said, could be operated by push buttons on stepped-down current.
Sero has every conceivable size and type of bulb in his collection from tiny surgical "grain of wheat" lamps to a huge, 400-watt high intensity lamp built experimentally for the torch of the Statue of Liberty.
"Some people spend their lives making money, and when they die, everyone fights for it. I spent my life collecting bulbs," Sero said, proudly. "When I'm gone, I'll leave something valuable"
Sero would like to have his Palace of Light in Detroit because he is a third-generation Detroiter. But, he said, unless the Motor City wakes up and offers a building, he'll be forced to take his collection to some other city.
He gets many of his bulbs through the mail from people who lave heard about his collection. Others, the bulb snatcher gets himself.
"When I see a bulb I'd like I simply ask for it," he said. "And I have never been turned down."
His collection includes a bulb from the battleship Maine which was sunk in 1898; one from the bomb bay of the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima; one from Hitler's limousine, and the dial light from Hemrich Himmler's radio.
"Perhaps my strangest bulb," he said, "is an ordinary 25-watt electric bulb. It killed a cow and was found burning in the cow's mouth."
The collection keeps growing and the bigger it gets the more anxious Sero is for a building. He said he spends more time trying to find some place to keep them than he does in taking care of them.
