"[The company name of] lava brand motion lamp' hasn't caught on with American consumers."
James P. Miller, Chicago Tribune
Englishman Edward Craven Walker (1918-2000) had the idea for the lava lamp while enjoying a drink in a bar. Looking at a homemade lamp, made from a cocktail shaker and some cans, Walker realized the potential for a glass containing fluids that did not mix and had different densities. Back home, he started work on a novelty lamp, using an incandescent bulb to heat the contents of a glass bottle containing a mixture of water, translucent wax, and carbon tetrachloride. In the lamp the wax heated up, melted, and rose in the. bottle—when it reached the top, it cooled and fell back to the bottom. Molten wax would have floated on water at any temperature, but the
carbon tetrachloride increased its density.
Walker started a company called Crest worth and in 1963 launched a range of what he called '"Astro" lamps. Invited to inspect the lamps, retailers in England thought them unattractive, but Walker .presented them at a Brussels trade show, where they were spotted by U.S. entrepreneur Adolph Wertheimer. Wertheimer and his business partner, Hy Spector, bought the U.S. rights and their company Lava Simplex International, began to manufacture the lamp. They called it the 'Lava Lite.'
The U.S. company carried on developing the lamp, using a range or shapes for the glass bottle and adding bright colors. The Lava Lite was a huge success during the 1960s, becoming an icon as a standard item of psychedelic paraphernalia—not least because the lamp's brightly colored blobs were thought to recall hallucinations caused by drugs such as LSD.
