Theodore Waddell Elettra Lamp

Theodore Waddell

'Elettra'

Zanotta, Italy, 1968

Modern Design Classics

Italian designer Theodore Waddell designed the Elettra lamp for Zanotta in 1968. This lamp was a technical wonder at the time it was released; the bottom cylindrical metal plate of the lamp sends a very small amount of current through the bottom tips of the multicolored 'lamp rods', illuminating the small light bulbs enclosed in the center of the lamp rods. The lighting rods are modular and can be taken out and re-arranged at will. Simply lift them off the bottom plate and the light will switch off.  Theodore Waddell named it the Elettra lamp after the ELETTRA Synchrotron Light Laboratory, a laboratory located in Basovizza on the outskirts of Trieste, Italy. The facility, available for use by the Italian and international scientific communities, houses several ultra bright light sources, which use the synchrotron and free electron laser (FEL) sources to produce light ranging from ultraviolet to X-rays. 

This product has been discontinued since the early 1970s.