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Eventually, so much light proved to be too much. Certainly, bold, bright light would always have its allure—the gaudiness of Times Square, the coronation of a tsar—but it wasn't the light for everyday streets. Shadow life, people found, had its value, too. Municipalities that had embraced the tower arc lights decided to dismantle them and try for something more modest and traditional: lighting that would maintain hours distinct from day—navigable, but also mysterious and a bit hidden; a light that did not dominate them but inhabited the world along with them. They turned away not only from the arc lights but also from the functional appearance of the arc tower. In downtown Minneapolis, where Brush had erected an "electric moon"—a tall post comprising eight arc lamps—the city council "following the practice of many another progressive city, ... eliminated the ungainly post of iron ... and substituted therefor[e] upon all of her principal business streets an ornamental lamp post of splendid design with five lights." For added grace, the city installed hanging planters on its new lampposts.

Whereas the smaller cities may have overreached in a large way before drawing back, the life of arc lights in New York City had a slightly different trajectory. New Yorkers were accustomed to relatively bright light; even so, the brilliance of the arcs was startling and brought a bit of unease at first. Brush installed his first arc light system in late 1880, along a street that was illuminated with gaslight. His lampposts weren't commanding towers, but they did stand at twice the height of the gas lamps, a "single light alone being equal to 10 times that of the half-dozen coal gas burners below." The New York Times reported that

the moment the dazzling electric sparks appeared, there was a general turning from the shop windows to the lights. Exclamations of admiration and approval were heard on all sides, together with calculations as to the effect upon the gas companies.... Like all electric lights there was a certain intensity about the powerful white rays which, to unaccustomed gazers and persons with weak eyes, somewhat detracted from the pleasure of the illumination. This however will be modified by time and by constant use, while the possibilities of strengthening and softening the rays by the use of ground porcelain or colored glass are such that almost any effect may be produced. As it was last night, the eye, after resting for a time on the dazzling brilliancy of the fierce white jets turned with relief to the mellow golden color which the street lamps and shop windows assumed by contrast.

Over time, porcelain globes did mitigate the light, and in this more modest form, arc lights would illuminate city streets for decades to come. But arc lights had conditioned people to a new level of brightness. By comparison, the gas streetlights that had begun the century, and had once enthralled city dwellers with their soft brilliance and beauty, now appeared dull and ineffectual, much as oil lamps had seemed when gaslight was new. By the end of the nineteenth century, the New York City gaslights, which had in truth become brighter and more reliable over the years, would be perceived as the lights of other days. "Since the electric lamps have become so common in the streets there is scarcely a gas-lighted neighborhood that has not felt that it was being defrauded out of its proper amount of light," an 1898 newspaper article commented. "Occasionally complaints are heard that certain gas lamps are no better than kerosene oil lamps, and the complainants aver that the illuminating power of the gaslights is continually diminishing."

7. Incandescence

ARC LIGHTS, EVEN WITH SHADES, shone far too intensely to illuminate domestic interiors, and they could not be made less powerful—nineteenth-century scientists would say they were "indivisible." How, then, to make electric illumination intimate enough for the home, equal to the 10 to 20 candlepower of a gaslight fixture? It was a challenge little different in kind from the one Ice Age