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ELECTRIC CHRISTMAS LIGHTS
1960-1969
Page 3

Editor's Notes about the 1950s-1970s Old Christmas Tree Lights Pages:

This chapter and the ones that follow are attempts to reconstruct of Bill Nelson's original chapters on Christmas lighting in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Unfortunately, they were lost when Bill passed away and his brother George took over the site in 2004. In addition, Bill was just learning FrontPage, and he often made mistakes that caused his photos not to link up properly when he changed servers, so a number of his photos went missing during his lifetime. In many cases, only the thumbnail survived; in some not even that. We have done an exhaustive search for the missing photos and restored them when we could. But to make these pages more readable, we have deleted descriptions of photos that are not shown. If you are researching this period and wish to see even those descriptions, please visit the 2003 version of this site.

 

 

This 1963 advertisement from General Electric touts their new 100% made in America Christmas lighting outfits. With the huge NOMA Corporation and other Christmas lighting manufacturers struggling financially due to increased importing of light sets, GE decided to "make their move" so to speak. Although the ad says that this is GE's first offering of Christmas lights, the Company is known to have produced Christmas lighting outfits in the very early 1900s.

 

This outfit is from 1962, and was imported from Italy by the Kurt S. Adler Company, who is still in business today. Made to resemble old fashioned lanterns, this set is particularly pretty when lit. Chris cuff shares this set with us from his collection, and reports that the AC cord is still stapled inside the box-the set has not been used since it was made in 1962!

 

Amazingly, this unbranded set of Italian lights instructs the user that the permanently-wired lamps are easily replaceable, by simply cutting out the bad lamp and splicing in a new one! The set is not UL listed for obvious reasons... From the collection of Chris Cuff.

 

Also from Chris Cuff's collection, here is another of the myriad novelty outfits available from Italy in the 1960s. This outfit is a 10 light set of jeweled, elongated diamond shaped lights from 1962.

 

Here is a set of jeweled eggs from Chris' collection, also from Italy. The set is circa 1962.

 

This interesting C-7 outfit from Peerless has been kindly shared with us from the collection of Scott Sutter. The set is special because it can easily be dated, as it belonged to Scott's father's aunt, who worked in the Peerless factory for many years. She brought home the outfit from the final production run the last year the Company was in business- 1968.
(Unfortunately the photo of this box lid has been lost.)

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