The Krypton Globe

A laboratory bench in a lamp works in Budapest on a winter evening, snow on the dark window, on a grey stone slab a small lamp burning in a plain brass test holder, a nearly spherical bulb of plain clear glass four centimetres across with a short neck, inside a slender glass stem with two fine support wires and a tiny glowing coiled filament, a screw base of tarnished brown-gold brass, its hard white light on glass flasks, two grey gas cylinders with bare shoulders and a round gauge with a blank pale face, a hand in a white lab coat sleeve holding a second unlit bulb up to the light.