Lightolier is a company that manufactures and sells
a wide array of lighting fixtures. It was founded in
1904 by Bernhard Blitzer under the name of New York Gas
and Appliance Co. When electric lighting started to be
more widely accepted, the name was changed to Lightolier,
a contraction of the words light and chandelier. In 2007,
Philips Royal Electronics announced that it would acquire
the Genlyte Group which would make Lightolier a part of Philips.
In its early years, the company specialized in fancy
decorative chandeliers then made a shift to high-end
design and architectural in the 1920s.