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American Illuminations
How Americans adapted European royal illuminations for patriotic celebrations, spectacular expositions, and intensely bright commercial lighting to create the world's most dazzling and glamorous cities.
Illuminated fêtes and civic celebrations began in Renaissance Italy and spread through the courts of Europe. Their fireworks, torches, lamps, and special effects glorified the monarch, marked the birth of a prince, or celebrated military victory. Nineteenth-century Americans rejected such monarchial pomp and adapted spectacular lighting to their democratic, commercial culture. In American Illuminations, David Nye explains how they experimented with gas and electric light to create illuminated cityscapes far brighter and more dynamic than those of Europe, and how these illuminations became symbols of modernity and the conquest of nature.
Americans used gaslight and electricity in parades, expositions, advertising, elections, and political spectacles. In the 1880s, cities erected powerful arc lights on towers to create artificial moonlight. By the 1890s they adopted more intensive, commercial lighting that defined distinct zones of light and glamorized the city's White Ways, skyscrapers, bridges, department stores, theaters, and dance halls. Poor and blighted areas disappeared into the shadows. American illuminations also became integral parts of national political campaigns, presidential inaugurations, and victory celebrations after the Spanish-American War and World War I.
eBook
How the light bulb changed history
How the Light Bulb Changed History examines the invention of the light bulb, how it works, and how electric light changed the way people live and work.
Book
The installation and impact of artificial lighting at Hatfield House: Lord Salisbury's adoption of gas and electric lighting in the later nineteenth century
Until recently a focus on the architects and owners who built and lived in great country houses has generally overshadowed a more practical analysis of the introduction of technology into country houses. In this paper the author seeks to contribute to a now expanding field of research into country house technology through a technical and social study of the lighting technology introduced at Hatfield House during the later nineteenth century. The author makes use of previously unpublished records held at Hatfield House Archive to uncover the complex and involved process carried out by Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, Third Marquess of Salisbury, in order to successfully install gas lighting in 1868-9 and electric lighting in 1881. Each technology is considered in terms of when and how it was installed, where in the building it was placed and the effect it had on the functioning of the house and the lives of the family. The author observes that, despite the large amount of work required for each installation, there was not an immediate transition from old technology to new. Additionally, whilst both gas and electric lighting provided greater comfort and convenience, they did not have a major impact on the lives of those who lived and worked at Hatfield.
Journal Article
The electric war : Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the race to light the world
\"The riveting nonfiction account of the scientific competition to light the world with electricity.\"-- Provided by publisher.
BOOK
The Compliance of Electric Lighting in Colonial Algerian Theatres During the First Half of The Twentieth Century: The Case of Constantine and Annaba Theatres
The majority of theatres built in Algeria in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries during the French colonial period are still operational. Together with their architectural richness, lighting design, using artificial light, plays a key role in ensuring their continued functioning.The aim of this work is to reveal the significance of lighting design over time, and to establish how it was taken into consideration and given equal importance to architectural design. The different contexts for the development of artificial lighting are discussed, and the compliance of lighting in the Algerian theatres with the normative values for interior lighting used at the time is evaluated. An examination of their electrification during the first half of the twentieth century, by the firm of Clémançon, is based on information obtained through the technical archives held at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (French National Library). These findings allow us to calculate the illumination of the Constantine and Annaba theatres using the lumen method, which is compared to the recommended values. The results show that the surveyed auditoria met the recommended minimum illumination levels, were greater than 40Lux for the Constantine theatre in 1936 and were 70Lux for the Annaba theatre in 1952.
Journal Article
Seven Centuries of Energy Services: The Price and Use of Light in the United Kingdom (1300-2000)
Before the mid-eighteenth century, most people lived in near-complete darkness except in the presence of sunlight and moonlight. Since then, the provision of artificial light has been revolutionised by a series of innovations in appliances, fuels, infrastructures and institutions that have enabled the growing demands of economic development for artificial light to be met at dramatically lower costs: by the year 2000, while United Kingdom GDP per capita was 15 times its 1800 value, lighting services cost less than one three thousandth of their 1800 value, per capita use was 6,500 times greater and total lighting consumption was 25,000 times higher than in 1800. The economic history of light shows how focussing on developments in energy service provision rather than simply on energy use and prices can reveal the 'true' declines in costs, enhanced levels of consumption and welfare gains that have been achieved. While emphasising the value of past experience, the paper also warns against the dangers of over-reliance on past trends for the long-run forecasting of energy consumption given the potential for the introduction of new technologies and fuels, and for rebound and saturation effects.
Journal Article
Shorting the Future? Capital Markets and the Launch of the British Electrical Industry, 1882–1892
Although Britain's electrification started with considerable technological and market advantages, it proceeded remarkably slowly and hesitantly. Using share-price data, this study investigates the conventional explanations for this disappointing outcome: notably, perverse regulation and competition from entrenched gas-light providers. It finds that these oft-cited factors had an imperceptible impact on the course of the British electrical industry's turbulent market launch in 1882. However, we show that, owing to the fledgling electrical industry's need for incessant experimentation, short-sighted, self-serving decisions by the management of the early British industry's most prominent firm squandered a well-funded start, with long-lasting adverse consequences.
Journal Article
Inventing in a Crisis: Lighting the United States after the 1973 Oil Embargo
Political events can shape innovations. The 1973 oil embargo pushed the U.S. lighting industry to develop energy-saving lamps and designs. It led to federal mandates for lighting efficiency standards. This article examines changes in lighting system technology during the 1970s and 1980s in their historical context and describes their effect on subsequent public policy. At first, manufacturers introduced novel devices for diverse markets, depending on how much new research was required and whether they expected public demand for efficiency to be temporary or structural. The industry's design practices experienced a contentious cultural shift, in which energy efficiency became the dominant concern rather than a low priority. Post-embargo decisions by producers, conveyors, and consumers combined to shift path dependencies in lighting. They shaped subsequent market and regulatory actions that fed revolutionary changes in lighting in the 2010s.
Journal Article
Tesla
Nikola Tesla was a major contributor to the electrical revolution that transformed daily life at the turn of the twentieth century. His inventions, patents, and theoretical work formed the basis of modern AC electricity, and contributed to the development of radio and television. Like his competitor Thomas Edison, Tesla was one of America's first celebrity scientists, enjoying the company of New York high society and dazzling the likes of Mark Twain with his electrical demonstrations. An astute self-promoter and gifted showman, he cultivated a public image of the eccentric genius. Even at the end of his life when he was living in poverty, Tesla still attracted reporters to his annual birthday interview, regaling them with claims that he had invented a particle-beam weapon capable of bringing down enemy aircraft.
Plenty of biographies glamorize Tesla and his eccentricities, but until now none has carefully examined what, how, and why he invented. In this groundbreaking book, W. Bernard Carlson demystifies the legendary inventor, placing him within the cultural and technological context of his time, and focusing on his inventions themselves as well as the creation and maintenance of his celebrity. Drawing on original documents from Tesla's private and public life, Carlson shows how he was an \"idealist\" inventor who sought the perfect experimental realization of a great idea or principle, and who skillfully sold his inventions to the public through mythmaking and illusion.
This major biography sheds new light on Tesla's visionary approach to invention and the business strategies behind his most important technological breakthroughs.
eBook