Brilliant_ The Evolution of Artificial Light - Jane Brox [0]
The Evolution of Artificial Light
Jane Brox
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN HARCOURT
BOSTON NEW YORK
2010
Copyright © 2010 by Jane Brox
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
For information about permission to reproduce selections from
this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Company,
215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.
www.hmhbooks.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Brox, Jane, date
Brilliant : the evolution of artificial light / Jane Brox.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-547-05527-5
1. Lighting — History. I. Title.
TH7900.B68 2010
621.32093— dc22 2009035441
Book design by Brian Moore
Printed in the United States of America
DOC 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For
DEANNE URMY
and for
JOHN BISBEE
Contents
Prologue: The Earth at Night as Seen from Space [>]
PART I
1. Lascaux: The First Lamp [>]
2. Time of Dark Streets [>]
3. Lanterns at Sea [>]
4. Gaslight [>]
5. Toward a More Perfect Flame [>]
PART II
6. Life Electric [>]
7. Incandescence [>]
8. Overwhelming Brilliance: The White City [>]
9. Niagara: Long-Distance Light [>]
PART III
10. New Century, Last Flame [>]
11. Gleaming Things [>]
12. Alone in the Dark [>]
13. Rural Electrification [>]
14. Cold Light [>]
15. Wartime: The Return of Old Night [>]
16. Lascaux Discovered [>]
PART IV
17. Blackout, 1965 [>]
18. Imagining the Next Grid [>]
19. At the Mercy of Light [>]
20. More Is Less [>]
21. The Once and Future Light [>]
Epilogue: Lascaux Revisited [>]
Acknowledgments [>]
Bibliographic Note [>]
Notes [>]
Index [>]
Prologue
The Earth at Night as Seen from Space
Five hundred years ago, if you could have seen the earth from above, cities, towns, and villages would have appeared nearly as dark as the oak forests. Perhaps glints of light would have leaked through doorways and shuttered windows early in the evening, or a few lanterns would have bobbed down the lanes, but no streetlights would have shone. Within, candles and lamps no brighter than those of Roman times would have lit only a bowl of porridge, a book, a shirtsleeve in need of mending, another. If someone reached for a thread or let out a long sigh, the flame would quiver, and the shadows would quiver, too. Then everything would right itself again. Such small light was precious and meted out sparingly. For much of the evening, people lay in their houses after dousing their cooking fires, sleeping and dreaming away the hours. If by chance on a clear, moonless night they stepped out of their intimate dark and looked up to the heavens, the stars would have been so many that "one could not have put a finger in between them."
Now that our nights are flooded—both outside and in—with insistent light, evidence of our illumination reaches farther into space than any other human thing. On a map of the earth at night as seen from space—made up of a composite of images from satellite photographs taken on nights of the new moon—light blooms across the continents like yeast in warm, sweet water. The edges of land are defined by blazes flaring from the center of cities and waning, though never disappearing, in the suburbs between. Across the United States and western Europe, light wends inland along highways and rivers and stipples the interior foothills, plateaus, and grasslands, diminishing only in the mountains and deserts. Even the interiors of Asia, South America, and Africa—where many people live beyond the reach of electric grids—are salted with small brilliances. The most glaring spots on the map correspond to flagrancy and prosperity rather than density of human habitation: at the moment, the eastern seaboard of the United States is brighter than anyplace in China or India. Only parts of the oceans and the poles appear completely dark.
The story of this increase—just a few centuries old—is one of technology and power, of politics, grievances, and class: the wealthy and powerful have always been the first to acquire new kinds of light and have always had more of it than others. But the story of light is also one of constancy and mystery, of beauty,