Lighting a dark city
Before the 1800s, most streets were dark after sunset. People who had to go out carried lanterns or paid attendants with torches, and a few wealthy districts had oil lamps. Households relied on candles, tallow dips and oil lamps, which were smoky, dim and a source of fires. Light was expensive enough that many people structured their day around daylight.
The rise of gas
Gas lighting changed that. Coal gas, made by heating coal in closed retorts, could be piped through a town and burned at lamps. The process left behind coke fuel that gas works could sell, and coal tar by-products that later fed synthetic dyes and wider industrial chemistry. William Murdoch in Britain experimented with gas lighting in the late 1790s and early 1800s, and a demonstration of gas street lighting in London’s Pall Mall around 1807 helped popularize the idea. In 1812 the Gas Light and Coke Company was chartered in London. Baltimore had gas street lighting by the 1810s, and gas networks soon reached cities in Europe and North America.
Gas brought real benefits. Streets became safer to walk at night, shops and theaters could stay open late, and factories could run evening shifts. But gas also had problems. Burning gas used up oxygen, produced heat and soot, and in poorly ventilated rooms the air quality suffered. Leaks could cause explosions, and the smell of coal gas was an everyday complaint. The light was dim by modern standards, though a gas mantle introduced in the 1880s, associated with Carl Auer von Welsbach, made it brighter and more efficient.
Many homes, especially modest ones, used kerosene lamps instead, as refined fuel from petroleum refining became cheap in the second half of the 1800s. Kerosene was easy to buy and needed no pipes, but the lamps required cleaning and filling and were a common cause of household fires.
What electric light offered
When practical electric lamps appeared around 1880, supporters pointed to several advantages over gas.
- No flame in the room, which reduced fire risk and removed soot from ceilings and furnishings.
- No oxygen consumption or fumes inside the building.
- Easy switching, without matches or lighters.
- Steadier light, and in later years brighter light for the same cost.
Early customers were often those who valued these qualities most: theaters worried about fire, newspaper offices, department stores that wanted to display goods, and wealthy households. Some early installations were as much a statement of modernity as a sensible economic choice.
The slow replacement
It would be wrong to imagine gas lamps disappearing quickly. For many years gas stayed cheaper than electricity for lighting in many places. Gas companies also fought back by improving their product, with the Welsbach mantle being the best-known example, and some used gas for cooking and heating as well, which kept their customers connected. In many cities gas and electric lighting existed side by side for decades. Some European streets still had gas lamps well into the twentieth century, and a few cities still maintain them today for historic reasons.
The balance shifted as power stations grew larger and cheaper to run. Bigger generators supplied electricity at lower cost per unit, and the introduction of tungsten filaments in the early 1900s meant that a given amount of electricity produced much more light. Over time electric lighting became cheaper than gas in more places, and gas companies increasingly turned to other uses.
Streets, councils and power stations
Street lighting was usually a public decision. City councils signed contracts with gas or electric companies, or in some places built municipal plants. Arc lamps were popular on main streets in the 1880s and 1890s, and incandescent street lamps followed. The choice sometimes became political: private companies argued against municipal competition, and municipal supporters argued that public ownership kept prices down. Practices differed widely between countries.
Electric light also reshaped the work of those who maintained the old system. Lamplighters, who went round at dusk to light each gas lamp, gradually lost their jobs as timers, remote switching and electric systems took over.
Homes and daily life
In houses, electric light took longer to arrive than in public places because of the cost of wiring. Wiring older buildings was difficult and expensive, and many homes were only connected in the early to middle 1900s. Once available, electric light changed daily routines: reading in the evening, sewing, children’s homework and late meetings all became easier. It also supported new habits at work, including night shifts in some industries.
The light bulb thus belongs to a wider history of urban infrastructure. Gas had already taught city governments and companies how to supply a utility through pipes. Electric light borrowed much of that model, including metered billing and franchise agreements, and then went on to carry far more than lighting, such as power for traffic signals and later much else.