[dieseljeep]

Originally Posted by Jeffhs

The house I grew up in had a light above the kitchen table, shaped like a bowl but at the end of a chain. The light itself was at the end of the chain, with the bulb and its socket inside a removable glass globe. I've never seen anything like that since then; must have been a design unique to the 1950s (the house was built in 1954). This light must have been built like the proverbial tank, as it was still in place in the kitchen, with the original socket (unless it was replaced at least once; if it was, I don't remember), when I moved out in 1999. It still worked, which spoke volumes for the manner in which these things were built in the 1950s.

I haven't been back in my old neighborhood in years, so I don't know whether that light is still in the kitchen anymore; for all I know, the new owners of the house may have replaced it with, Heaven forbid, a modern one made of plastic. The apartment I live in today has a large ceiling fan in the front room (which is actually nearly the entire apartment, as this is a one-bedroom place) with a chandelier (three bulbs) below it.

Those fixtures probably had porcelain sockets instead the cheap bakelite sockets. Many users used too large of a wattage lamps and burned the sockets, so the fixture had to be replaced.