Brilliant_ The Evolution of Artificial Light - Jane Brox [28]
In the intimate spaces of home, this strange new light may not have required the same daily attention as did oil lamps and candles, but it had its drawbacks. Its larger flame produced considerable soot and an acid residue that destroyed fabric and wallpaper, and it consumed so much oxygen that people suffered headaches in poorly ventilated rooms, although as time went on, gas chandeliers eventually contained their own ventilation systems. But perhaps more important, with the advent of gaslight people had to reimagine how light would inhabit their homes. Light's abstract future had begun: there was nothing to tend, no wick to see consumed, no melting wax or reservoirs of oil drawing down. The size of the flame could be controlled by a switch and did not waver, flicker, or gutter. It not only stood upright but shot out of the core sideways or upside down, in the shape of a fish tail, a bat wing, or a fan. It was not to be doused with water or extinguished with breath. Fire itself seemed to travel through the pipes. "It was strangely believed that the pipes conveying the gas must be hot!" exclaimed engineer Samuel Clegg. "When the passages to the House of Commons were lighted, the architect insisted upon the pipes being placed four or five inches from the wall, for fear of fire, and the curious would apply the gloved hand to the pipe to ascertain the temperature."
Not only had the nature of the flame itself changed; until gas arrived, light—however meager—had always been one's own and self-contained within each dwelling. Gaslight divided light—and life—from its singular, self-reliant past. All was now interconnected, contingent, and intricate. When people installed gas, they gave up control of light to an outside interest; they no longer purchased candles or oil and carried it home. Rather, their consumption was registered by a meter, they purchased their fuel by the cubic yard, and it was delivered as it was consumed. Their homes were connected to their neighbors' homes, to the homes of strangers, to factories, and to the streets in a shared fate. It marked the beginning of the way we are now, with our nets of voices, signs, and pulses, with power subject to flickers and loss we can't do anything about.
Although for decades gaslight remained the province of better neighborhoods, people throughout the city suffered the streets being dug up for the laying of lines, and along the lines and at the lampposts, gas leaked from ill-fitted joints and seams and from accidental ruptures. Explosions flattened buildings, sent bricks and debris flying, and killed and maimed workers, householders, pedestrians, and shoppers in nearby bakeries and butcher shops. Most affected were the neighborhoods, often among the poorest, that had to endure the presence of gasworks, with their enormous storage tanks looming above the surrounding buildings and their furnaces belching a dense, foul smoke that permeated everything with a sulfurous stench. The gasworks contaminated nearby soils and subsoils with ammonia and sulfur, polluted water supplies, and drove the surrounding area into decline. One critic of the time noted: "Wherever a gas-factory—and there are many such—is situated within the metropolis, there is established a centre whence radiates a whole neighbourhood of squalor, poverty and disease. No improvement can ever reach that infected neighborhood