Illumination

Illumination. Although lighting might appear a necessity, the perception of needs has changed radically since the Colonial Era, when the expense of illumination restricted it to domestic use, and night and day were sharply demarcated. To light their homes, early Americans relied on tallow candles, floating tapers that burned assorted greases, and lamps that burned fuels such as lard and turpentine. Whale oil, cleaner but more expensive, was in such demand by the early nineteenth century that American whaling ships circled the globe. Kerosene came into use after 1859, when oil production began in western Pennsylvania. Incandescent electric lighting based on Thomas Edison's system became available in New York City after 1882 but spread only gradually. In 1910, about 15 percent of all homes had electricity. By 1930 the level in cities topped 90 percent and reached 50 percent in the irrigated West, but remained under 10 percent in other farm areas. New Deal programs completed rural electrification only after 1935.

In terms of outdoor illumination, colonials who ventured out at night carried torches or lanterns. Benjamin Franklin organized the first public lighting in 1751, placing lanterns on Philadelphia's streets. Gaslight was introduced in 1816, when Baltimore started making artificial gas from coal. By 1828, New York's Broadway was brilliantly illuminated with gas flares, giving rise to a new urban phenomenon, nightlife. During the 1840s, gasworks spread to medium‐sized cities; by 1860, 183 urban gaslighting companies served both domestic and commercial customers.

Although natural gas was used to light several buildings in Fredonia, New York, as early as 1821, it was long ignored as a light source because of difficulties in delivering it to consumers. In the 1870s natural gas began to overtake manufactured gas in some areas, but electrification seized much of the market before pipelines could be developed. Charles Brush's powerful arc lights, in which an electric current flows between two carbon rods, were first displayed in 1878 in Cleveland, Ohio. Common in cities and at expositions for a generation, incandescent lighting was little used outdoors before about 1900. As electric lighting spread, Americans debated whether it should be a public or a private utility. Boston, New York, and Chicago opted for private power, but a minority of cities, notably Cleveland and Los Angeles, did not.

Artificial illumination expanded the workday. Early factories closed at dusk, but as lighting improved and became less costly, investors realized that several shifts were possible. Gaslight, dangerous in cotton mills, was installed in newspaper offices and other venues. California gold mines adopted arc lighting in the 1870s, and after incandescent light proved safe for cotton and flour mills, it spread wherever visual acuity mattered. After about 1900, banks, offices, libraries, and schools installed artificial lighting. The age‐old distinction between day and night eroded, especially during the 1940s, when wartime needs necessitated round‐the‐clock production.

Although incandescent lighting remained dominant, other forms of electric illumination appeared in the twentieth century. Neon lights, developed in France in 1911, found many commercial uses, adding color and variety to the urban scene. Fluorescent lights, another French invention (1867), became commercially available in the United States in 1938, enjoying great success since they used less electricity than incandescent bulbs while providing the same illumination. As the century ended, powerful mercury‐vapor and sodium‐vapor lights illuminated highways, city streets, and public venues, while small, high‐intensity halogen bulbs proved popular for reading and other purposes requiring bright, concentrated illumination.
See also Electrical Industry; Electricity and Electrification; Factory System; Leisure; New Deal Era, The; Petroleum Industry; Urbanization.

Bibliography

Wolfgang Schivelbusch , Disenchanted Night: The Industrialization of Light in the Nineteenth Century, 1988.
David E. Nye , Electrifying America: Social Meanings of a New Technology, 1880–1940, 1990.

David E. Nye