Brilliant_ The Evolution of Artificial Light - Jane Brox [31]
The theater, too, was transformed by gaslight—and limelight, which was used first as a signal by surveyors and then adapted for the theater in the 1830s. Not only had the candlesnuffer with his interruptions become a thing of the past, but light could now be dimmed and heightened with ease, which allowed for more sophisticated lighting effects, and the stage could be more intensely lit than the rest of the theater, which formally isolated the performance from the audience. Actors had to adjust to the new light. "The new mode of illumination made it rather difficult for old-line declamatory actors ... to practice the tricks of their trade," notes theater historian Frederick Penzel. "All of a sudden, gestures seemed overbroad, and facial expressions seemed greatly exaggerated. What had apparently worked before murky candlelights was no longer effective before the gaslights. Even the makeup appeared garish. Things only half-seen before were now totally revealed, and all had to be toned down."
Gaslight also transformed the crowds walking the streets: darting eyes, staring eyes, averted hooded eyes; myriad sounds and colors; confinement and freedom—all became illuminated. What was a walker but "a kaleidoscope equipped with consciousness," according the street a soul, according it the power to take one's own away? Humanity at night had become the sea. "As the darkness came on, the throng momently increased," Edgar Allan Poe wrote; "and, by the time the lamps were well litten, two dense and continuous tides of population were rushing past the door." But the streetlights, as Poe saw it, also illuminated different aspects of human nature:
As the night deepened ... not only did the general character of the crowd materially alter (its gentler features retiring in the gradual withdrawal of the more orderly portion of the people, and its harsher ones coming out into bolder relief, as the late hour brought forth every species of infamy from its den,) but the rays of the gas-lamps, feeble at first in their struggle with the dying day, had now at length gained ascendancy and threw over every thing a fitful and garish lustre. All was dark yet splendid.
Buoyant, frivolous, expansive, uncontainable humanity: light seemed not only to extend the hours of the day but also to have created life out of absence and to have allowed for different qualities in human nature to have their say. Surely, the medieval cities lay buried under paving stones, and the ancient perimeter gates had been lost in the sprawling reaches. "Night"—that one old, taut syllable once uttered with fear and apprehension—no longer sufficed. In the middle of the nineteenth century, a new word was minted: "nightlife."
But what happened when the old night returned, as it inevitably did when a gas explosion or a gasworkers' strike occurred? Such instances didn't darken an entire city—most municipalities of any size were served by various competing gas companies, each having contracts for certain districts. Also, when a retort shut down or an explosion occurred, a vestige of gas remained in the system, so the lights continued to shine for a while, then dimmed before disappearing completely. Still, even a few hours in darkness caused major alarm—and more alarm as the century progressed and the dependence on gaslight grew. A New York Times account titled "Bereft of Light" detailed the events in a neighborhood in the wake of a gas explosion at the Metropolitan Gas Works on December 23, 1871, which darkened the area between Thirty-fourth and Seventy-ninth streets. The explosion shattered windows, sent bricks flying, stopped clocks, and startled horses. There was a fire, put out in several hours, which injured a fireman. But by far the most newsworthy part of it all was the anxiety:
Some rushed about from house to house while the more thoughtful ones besieged the Police Stations.... The storekeepers lighted up their shops with candles and lamps