flash·bulb

or flash bulb (flăsh′bŭlb′)

A glass bulb filled with finely shredded aluminum or magnesium foil that is ignited by electricity to produce a short-duration high-intensity light flash for taking photographs. Also called photoflash.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Flash bulb

A glass bulb containing a fine metal filament (usually magnesium) that could be ignited electrically to give a brief, intense flash of light for exposing photographic film.

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Noun

flash bulb - a lamp for providing momentary light to take a photograph

flash lamp, flashbulb, flashgun, photoflash, flash

flash camera - a camera with a photoflash attachment

lamp - an artificial source of visible illumination

photographic equipment - equipment used by a photographer

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References in periodicals archive

From the late 1920s, as the flash bulb began to contain and control the violence of the burst of light, its usage expanded rapidly, especially in photojournalism, and then even more with the flashcube in the 1960s.

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Five women, frozen by a Sylvania flash bulb, their corsages turned pure white by the explosion of light.

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The American public has the attention span of a flash bulb and little regard for history.

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In poems like "Birthing," the spirit takes form, "I am not me, yet./I am just an understanding." Eady continues to delve into the mind and body of this imagined black man who stalks and preys on white women and their children in poems like "My Heart," "My Face" and "Press Conference" where he lurks just behind the screen of Smith's lie and reports, like an entry to a travel diary: "And this is my life now./I am a faint hum behind/The sensation, the blur of doubt/At the corner of the flash bulb."

Brutal Imagination

He said he thought he saw Mr Farrell's flash bulb go off between 10 and 15 times, adding: "It was a fair amount, but I wouldn't call it excessive."

Actor hoped for reunion with ex-love on 'night of car drama'

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Over the coming years, photography became ever more popular with the invention of the modern flash bulb, in 1927, Kodachrome in 1935 and Kodacolour six years later.

SAD DAY AS PHOTO SHOP SET TO CLOSE

In a step-by-step account, the agent is seen building and detonating the device, which normally contained 10-12lbs of explosives and was triggered by a flash bulb from a standard camera.

CANDID CAMERA; Spies make video of clandestine skills

With notes of pink pepper, strawberry, tuberose, jasmine, white lily, heliotrope and white woods, it is packed in a crystal faceted bottle designed to be "reminiscent of a paparazzi flash bulb".

Beauty Bulletin