Hugh F. Hicks, 79; Amassed Huge Collection of Lightbulbs

Dr. Hugh Francis Hicks, the dentist whose Baltimore office was home to what is thought to be the world’s foremost collection of electric lightbulbs, died Tuesday at St. Joseph Medical Center in Baltimore of a heart attack. He was 79.

His enthusiasm for glowing glass never dimmed, and through the years he amassed a collection that included a bulb from the original torch of the Statue of Liberty and headlamps from the Mercedes-Benz limousines of Nazi leaders Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler.

Hicks regularly told visitors to his free, private museum that his was the only collection in the world containing an uninterrupted history of the lightbulb, including 15 or 20 bulbs that Thomas Edison probably held in his hands 122 years ago.

“In terms of numbers, his may very well be the largest collection in the world, certainly the largest collection any of us knew,” said Harold D. Wallace, a specialist with the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History.

“He was the kind of guy who never met a lightbulb he didn’t like.”

Born in Baltimore, Hicks was the son of a periodontist.

He earned his bachelor’s degree from Columbia University in 1945. After graduating from the University of Maryland School of Dentistry, he joined his father’s practice in 1951. Also a periodontist, he established his practice in 1957 and never fully retired.

His daughter, Frances Hicks Apollony, said her father became interested in lightbulbs at an early age.

“My grandmother always told the story that he didn’t want to play with toys when he was a baby, so she put a lightbulb in his crib and he began playing with it,” she said.

That was the beginning of a lifelong obsession that grew into a world-renowned collection of 75,000 bulbs.

About 10,000 were labeled and on display in the basement museum of his office. A subcategory of the collection includes lighting fixtures, from sconces to street lights and chandeliers.

The museum opened in 1964, and drew more than 6,000 visitors annually. They benefited from hands-on tours led by Hicks. Scholars, other collectors and fans from all over the world were among the visitors.

The largest bulb in his collection dates to 1926, is 4 feet high and requires 50,000 watts of electricity to glow. The most diminutive is a pin light that was produced in the 1960s and used in missile wiring. It is visible only under a microscope.

Other historical pieces include a 3-foot-long tubular bulb used during the 1930s to illuminate the ill-fated French liner Normandie; a dashboard light from the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan; and a 15-watt fluorescent bulb that illuminated the table on which the Japanese signed the surrender in World War II aboard the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay in 1945.

“This is the only museum in the world that covers the whole history of the lightbulb,” Hicks told the Baltimore Sun in a recent interview.

“And when we can teach the public, especially our schoolchildren, about the most important industrial development--the lightbulb--then we are fulfilling our mission.”

Hicks was married in 1950 to Mary Louise Amos, who died in 1990.

In addition to Apollony, Hicks is survived by another daughter, Louise Hicks Smith of Winchester, Va.; a sister, Lois Hicks Burkley of Baltimore; and four grandchildren.