Many of you are aware that Dr. Hugh F. Hicks, Curator of the Mount Vernon Museum of Incandescent Lighting, passed away this year. Dr. Hicks was instrumental in allowing his lamps to travel to other nations for viewing. In the following I quote from his "Lamp Reporter" of the Autumn issue of 1976:
"Under the terms of the Cultural Exchange Agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union, the United States Information Agency has prepared a major exhibition now being held in Moscow to commenorate our Bicentennial. The Title of the exhibit is 'United States of America?200 Years; The Continuing Revolution.' It contains several theme areas tracing our national development.
U.S.I.A. has asked the Mount Vernon Museum of Incandescent Lighting to participate in the thematic area stressing our inventiveness and productive technology. We are happy to have been able to establish the lighting display for this history-making exhibit. Among items now being shown are a strip of electric bulbs consisting of Edison's bamboo filament of 1880, a carbon lamp of 1908, a drawn tungsten filament lamp of 1910, and a present day 'coiled-coil' tungsten filament lamp. All are lighted?and hopefully will remain lighted throughout the exhibit as did those displayed on the Freedom Train for its two year travel period throughout our Nation.
The success of this Moscow exhibit is best described by quoting from the Baltimore Morning Sun Newspaper of Monday, November fifteenth, entitled, 'Reds Jam U. S. Show.' Moscow (AP)?Russians are waiting three to four hours to get into a United States bicentennial exhibit here, and police are turning many away because there is no room. 'I've never seen anything like it,' one American official said after striding past a half-mile-long line, three people abreast, outside the pavilion in Sokolniki Park.
The exhibit, which opened Thursday, is only the second national show about America in the Soviet Union since 1959. It features a 'circlorama' movie tour of the United States, photographs of American people, jazz recordings, a display of early American inventions, and souvenir copies of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence in Russian.
The exhibit can accomodate only 9,000 a day. 'We had that many already waiting in line by eleven this morning,' Frank Ursino, director of the exhibit, reported yesterday.'"
