Anglepoise lamp

[3][4] Carwardine applied to be a patent, number 404,615,[5] for a design using the mechanism on 4 July 1932, and manufactured the lamp himself in the workshops of his own company, Cardine Accessories, in Bath.

[6] He soon found the interest and demand so great that he needed a major expansion or partner and, on 22 February 1934, entered into a licensing agreement with Herbert Terry and Sons in Redditch.

According to the Anglepoise website, these were so well produced that when a crashed Vickers Wellington bomber was salvaged from Loch Ness in Scotland in 1985, the lamp still worked after being given a new battery – despite being submerged for around four decades.

The arm has been employed in other devices where it is necessary to hold an object stationary at a convenient point in space, notably the copy holder for typists and in some applications, the computer display screen.

In June 1949 he issued a memo to all staff in which he forbade BBC employees to illuminate any room with an Anglepoise lamp unless the main ceiling or wall light was also illuminated: Standing held a firm belief that a man working at a desk in a confined space with only the light from a low-power lamp would nurture furtive ideas and produce degenerate programme material.