Low Voltage Landscaping Lights

Back in the 1950’s outdoor lighting was not for everyone, for a start the voltage used was the same as for the home and any fixtures for outdoor lighting were very expensive and out of reach for a lot of people.

A man called Bill Locklin who was an electrical contractor in Redlands, California had a client who required some outdoor lights.

Bill Locklin came up with an ingenious idea for low voltage landscaping lights. He fashioned his lighting system from fruit juice cans, tractor headlamps and mayonnaise jars which became the lenses and the whole was powered by car batteries.

This system worked very well indeed and his client was well satisfied but what Bill Locklin did not know was that his client expected very special visitors to his home. These visitors were none other than President Dwight D, Eisenhower and his wife Mamie, the first lady.

These ingenious low voltage landscaping lights so impressed the Eisenhowers that they wanted some for themselves for their vacation hideaway.

This commission gave a very obvious boost to the company and it is still running very successfully today. Needless to say the company deserved any publicity it got from this exercise.

This goes to show that where there is a will there is a way. Who would have thought of putting together all this household stuff, actually rubbish. It was no longer rubbish though when it had been fashioned into very effective outdoor lighting.

One cannot but admire anyone with such foresight and imagination, to see the possibilities from such everyday items. Obviously being an electrical contractor he knew what would be needed but nevertheless he had obviously outstripped his competitors by coming up with a reasonably priced system.

I am sure many others would then copy his ideas but nobody could take away from him the fact that he was the first to come up with an affordable system of low voltage landscaping lights.

Now you can find a huge choice of lights, you no longer have to use fruit juice cans or mayonnaise jars. These lights have become more or less an art form.

The lights no longer are just a utilitarian object they add to your decor. They are not just something to give light that you perhaps want to hide as much as possible. So many of them look so good that you want them to be as visible as possible.