George Hansen, 92; Designer’s Swing-Arm Lamp Hugely Popular

George Hansen, 92, who adapted the idea of a wall-mounted, swing-arm lamp into his ubiquitous Hansen lamp, died Tuesday in New York City of causes associated with old age.

A graduate of the Rindge Technical School in his native Cambridge, Mass., Hansen began refining the swing-arm lamp as a staff sergeant stationed in Labrador during World War II. To create a light for reading in bed, he used bent and wired copper tubing, with a bulb at one end shielded by a tin can; it was bolted to the wall.

At war’s end, he became a professional lamp designer and by 1946 had his Hansen lamps made by a Queens metalworker. Later, Hansen hired Metalarte, a company in Barcelona, Spain, to make the lamps for such customers as the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library in Austin, Texas.

Hansen retired from designing in 1988, and his company, Hansen Lamps, was acquired in 1991 by Hinson & Co. in Manhattan. Last year, it sold 5,000 of the $300 swing-arm Hansen lamps.