Carbide Cap Lamps

Hughes Pathfinder with Knurled Base Front | HUGHES PATHFINDER WITH KNURLED BASE - Brass Pathfinder cap lamp by Hughes Brothers, Scranton, PA, with large brass reflector and black enameled clip, complete with felt holder and large thumb-wheel sparker assembly, hard-to-find knurled base, base marked HUGHES BROS PATHFINDER SCRANTON,PA, ex-Dave Thorpe collection [The Hughes Brothers of Scranton PA were a major U.S. manufacturer of safety lamps at the beginning of the 20th century. William S. Hughes of South Wales was a skilled maker of safety lamps where he designed safety lamps for well-known English hardware merchant Evan Thomas of Aberdare. Hughes packed up his family and immigrated to the U.S. in 1882 where he settled in Scranton. Hughes had three sons, William H. born in 1871, Ralph W. born in 1875 and Sidney R. born in 1877. The father was listed as working as a metal engraver after moving to Scranton until 1893 when he listed his occupation as a safety lamp maker at a new business located at 420 N. Main Ave. In 1898 the two brothers William H. and Ralph W. formed the Hughes Bros. company at their father’s shop. The youngest brother Sidney R. was not admitted as a partner in the business until 1914 although he was listed before then as an employee. Even though Hughes Bros. had a significant market share of the safety lamp sales in the U.S., they looked to expand as they introduced three new acetylene mining lamps in the early 1910s. Designated in an undated Hughes catalog as Pathfinder Styles A, B and C, two were hand lamps, B and C (the latter touted as a sportsman lamp) and the third, Style A, was a cap lamp easily recognized by the black steel clip that attaches the reflector to the lamp. Both hand lamps are quite rare. All lamps were available in either brass or nickel plate with two different sized reflectors in brass or steel. The Pathfinder cap lamp with the clip-on reflector was advertised as early as 1914 and into the 1920s in Keystone Catalogs. It is now known that an earlier rare Pathfinder cap lamp with an internally attached hook and fixed steel reflector was manufactured by Hughes and first advertised in an April 1912 edition of Mines and Minerals. That same early Pathfinder cap lamp was still being advertised in the November 1913 edition of the Colliery Engineer (follow on to Mines and Minerals magazine) before the clip-on reflector version was introduced. There has been speculation within the collector community that the early Pathfinder lamp was somehow associated through a manufacturing sequence with the equally rare but unmarked Acme cap lamp. Some have thought the Acme was also manufactured by Hughes because of the many similarities associated with both lamps. However, a close-up detailed comparison of this lamp with a mint Acme lamp right out of the marked box shows little evidence of similar construction and in fact seems to refute the claim that Hughes manufactured both. As noted by Gregg Clemmer, the Pathfinder lamps had limited use, primarily in Pennsylvania, but they never achieved the same success as the Hughes safety lamps. In 1918 the business moved to 410-412 North Ninth Avenue. After the end World War I, coal demand subsided, Scranton entered an economic depression and the Hughes Bros. business struggled. By 1929, both William H. and Ralph W. had left the company leaving only Sidney to run the company newly named the Hughes Brass Works. The business finally closed in 1937. (See Thorpe, Beneath the Surface – Inventors and Marketeers on the Miners’ Carbide Light, pp 143-153)]

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