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Nelson discovered a silk-covered Swedish hanging lamp that he coveted but found too expensive. He then recalled seeing a photo in the paper of Liberty ships being mothballed “by having the decks covered with netting and then being sprayed with a self-webbing plastic, ” which got him thinking. “And then, Whammo! ” Inspiration struck, and by the next night, Nelson had designed his first Bubble Lamp (1952) by spinning a skeleton of steel wires on a turntable and shooting it with translucent plastic until it was covered in a smooth, washable film. “When you put a light in it, it glowed. ”