It's been ages since we had a 'Lamp of the Day'.

Yep, that's the same lamp, only made a year later - enough from Siemens bros to change the nomenclature from "QH" to the British standard "MB/V". There were many of those available several years ago and I also managed to get one for the Collection (mine is from June '45).

It's definitely a valuable museum piece, representative of the early days of modern-age mercury lamps. Moreover, you can really tell that this is a high-end model, everything is handcrafted with care and, most interestingly, the arc tube has no exhaust tip... The quartz vessel was filled with mercury and argon via one of the burner extremities, and the final electrode assembly was then sealed off. That was some serious cutting-edge technology back then. Also, and of further interest, it seems that in 1945 the clear variant of this lamp (i.e., our model) was made specifically for the British army. Standard commercial types had an inside-etched bulb instead.

Thanks Max, that's really interesting to know. I've just examined it again and there is an etch I hadn't noticed before, it is the letters AP.16176 and the Admiralty symbol, which according to the database on Lamptech gives it a NATO stock number of 996-5727, an Air Ministry code of 5L/708 and a War Office code of XB. 16303 so it's quite the military lamp..!

It is indeed!