Hello people,

I have seen some of these ultra rare lamps with three way bases, and other with just normal ones. Did the 3 way one have more functions or was it just a cosmetic thing?
If any of you have the three way ones, can you try them in a 3 way socket?

(images taken from ebay, not mine.)

 James would probably be the person to answer this . Mine just has a normal base .

I'd like to get one of these, never seen one with a 3-way cap on it though.

That looks like it's stuck to the wall 

It looks like there were three different versions of the GE Miser Maxi Lite made, in the picture of the bottom of this page you can see a smaller A shape version as well as a reflector version.

Some of the GE circlites had the 3-way contact on the base too.  There was a 3-way model, but even the non 3-way had it as well.

I have a old press photo for the Halarcs that shows all 3 different lamp shapes : https://www.lighting-gallery.net/gallery/displayimage.php?album=5207&pos=13&pid=191831

In the late 1970s it was planned to launch the Halarc Electronic in 55W rating, along with a smaller 35W, and a 3-Way version operating at 55W and 35W.  Also in R and ER bulbs with inverted arc tubes for downlights.

It seems that only the 55W TB-19 version made it to the market.  The sales were disappointingly low, only several tens of thousands of lamps were sold.  Perhaps because of that there was no commercial incentive to bring the other versions to market.  A couple of the early engineering samples I used to own had a 3-Way base, but the middle ring contact was not connected.  I have never come across an actual 3-Way version, only reports about them.

Interesting, I wonder why they used that base..?

I'm guessing to only have one base type for the engineering sample lamps. It was probably easier to only use the 3 way bases and leave the ring contact unused for the regular lamps. Interesting info about the range of lamps that was proposed too. I guess that explains the reason why there's a smaller lamp and a reflector lamp in some of the promotional pictures.