From Darkness to Light
The age of the "gas lamp" was ushered in when William Murdock, a Scotsman, heated coal to produce gas in 1792, and was able to light both his home and workplace in Cornwall. When he lighted his cottage, he literally opened up a whole new industry and changed the living habits of the civilized world. By 1798, he had developed his invention to a point where he was using manufactured gas to light his entire factory.
The first gas street lighting took place in London in 1814, (Westminster Bridge was lit by gas for the first time on December 31, 1813) and by 1823 over 200 miles of London's streets were lit by gas lamps. Baltimore was the first U.S. city to be lit by gas in 1816 and the first to have a municipal gas company, but little Fredonia, New York was the first to drill a natural gas well to provide power to its citizens in 1820. The Marquis de Lafayette visited Fredonia in 1820, which may be why Paris, France also acquired gas lighting in 1820.
Between 1820 and 1888, many more cities around the world and in the United States were lit by gas. The lamplighter became a fixture of daily life, allowing citizens to enjoy both nighttime activities and increased safety on the streets. Within the home, gas fixtures were modeled after earlier kerosene fixtures and were meant to burn upward, with or without a glass shade. In 1888, Wellsbach invented a way to burn gas downward through a mantel, which increased the illumination significantly.
Already there were scientists and inventors working diligently to create a better form of lighting that would utilize electricity. In 1865, the German Herman Sprengel pioneered the vacuum light bulb, and a Yorkshireman, Joseph Swan, was one of the earliest credited inventors of an electrically operated incandescent lamp. Swan's early lamps provided low light output, were short lived, and were operated from battery cells.
Edison, working to overcome the limitations of Swan's incandescent light by the use of a carbon filament, began to envision a system that would provide electricity from a central power station to individual homes. He patented his distribution system in 1880 and the Pearl Street Station in New York City began providing electrical service to 85 customers in 1882. By 1900, builders were installing wire in homes around the country long before electricity might reach their locations. Nonetheless, there
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