The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California

Turning Night Into Day

Gutters ran down the middle of the streets to carry off the sewage. People walking along the street tried to keep close to the houses. But this was almost as bad, for at any moment someone might empty a pail of slop out of an upstairs window right down on their heads as they passed.

To insure themselves against such an unhappy fate, people who could afford it used to have servants go ahead of them with lighted torches to light up the way.

The First Street Lights

Night and Day

IN OLDEN times people, both those who lived in cities and those who lived in the country, began their day with the dawn and ended it when the sun set. There were no factories. There was no such thing as night work. All manufactured articles were produced in artisans' workshops. Everybody went early to bed and everybody got up early in the morning. There was no special need for lamps or street lights.

However, as industry developed, when large workshops, manufactories, began to appear, and a little later, factories, city life became an entirely different thing. The factory brought in the long working day and the night shift. Factory whistles shrieked long before daybreak, calling the workers to their jobs. Cities began to waken up earlier and go to bed later. Life in them ceased to be measured by the sun. Days grew longer, nights shorter. This made lamps and street lights a necessity. Light, bright and inexpensive light, was urgently needed.

Then began the work of inventors, which led eventually to gas and electricity. This, of course, did not happen all at once, any more than the old mediaeval town changed all at once into a modern manufacturing city. Our electric light has a long line of ancestors.

The Mysterious Disappearance of the Candle Flame

At first the inventors tried to improve the oil lamps. Now the first thing they had to know in order to make a good oil lamp was what happens to oil when it burns. They had to find out exactly what combustion is. It was only when this problem had finally been solved that good lamps began to appear.

If we put a burning candle into a jar and close the jar, the candle will burn all right for a while. But in a few seconds the flame will begin to die down and finally it will go out. If we take the candle out, relight it and put it back into the jar it will go out immediately this time. Now, there is still air in the jar, but there is something lacking in it, something which is necessary to produce a flame.