Tensor Desk Lamp

  • Sale
  • Regular price $75.00
Shipping calculated at checkout.


Invented by Jay Monroe an american engineer.  He created it,  manufactured in Brooklyn, New York and sold it. The company is Tensor Corporation.  It was super popular in the 1960s and 1970s. This model works great and looks great. It has along skinny gooseneck and a narrow cone of high-intensity white light, making shapes, colors and objects appear sharper to the eye. I found this one at a warehouse and used it in my own office.  The thing that raises my arm hair most about his light is really the brands tangential attachment to the notorious Watergate scandal.  That's right. According to the New York Times " in 1973, White House officials attributed the deletion of part of a critical 18-minute tape recording during the Watergate scandal on a combination of hums from the electric typewriter and the Tensor lamp of Rose Mary Woods, President Richard M. Nixon’s secretary. Mr. Monroe, whose engineering sophistication extended to complicated weapons systems, doubted that claim, his wife said".  Mr. Monroe died in 2007 at age 80.