Light Yesterday and Tomorrow Page 80

As the New Year’s eve bells rang in the 20th century, celebrants danced under the yellow light of carbon-filament lamps or — in the less ornate places — under gaslight chandeliers. After the ball, they walked home in streets sketchily lighted between pools of gloom by either gas or carbon-arc lamps. Arc or “arch” lamps, known as “electric candles,” had lighted some streets of Paris during the 1878 Exposition, and by 1885 were rather widespread — sometimes clustered on high masts in the city square, sometimes in front of the merchant’s store. Gradually they advanced across the American continent to illuminate the streets of places as remote as Salt Lake City. But they were too big and too awkward to bring indoors, except in the largest establishments, and fresh carbons had to be inserted every few dozen hours. Gas was still the champion.

Hansom cabs carried kerosene wick lamps in 1900. Steam trains had kerosene headlights, and Pintsch gas lamps flickered overhead in the coaches. Actors performed in front of acetylene footlights and miners’ lamps burned whale or lard oil — and smoked! Chiefly because of the cumbersomeness of the illuminants, the uses of light for decoration and many other present-day practices were then unknown.

In the towns, gaslights were popular in ceiling chandeliers and wall brackets, particularly burners wearing incandescent fabric caps impregnated with thorium and cerium oxides — the familiar Welsbach gas mantles. In the less-populated areas, where natural or manufactured gas (from soft coal) was not available, kerosene lamps provided the only portable light source. Dry batteries, small, portable lead-acid storage batteries, and flashlights were yet to be born.

Although the “practical” electric lamp bulb actually was over 20 years old by 1900, electric lighting was not universal until well into the 20th century. In general, electric lights in the first decade of this century were restricted to homes of the wealthier citizens, clubs, hotels, and some streets, or to the decorations of pageants and world’s fair buildings such as the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo. Understandably enough, the convenience and cleanliness of electric lighting were featured more than economics. For example, consider the advertisement of a large utility company:

“Electric Light is Bright as Sunlight! . . . Why offend your nose with vile smelling oil? . . . Why handle a dirty, smelly oil can? . . . Why be constantly bothered with trimming of wicks? . . . Why be constantly breathing smoke soot? . . . Why — if you can get Electric Light? . . . If you know a reason why—phone us. . . . If not — phone us anyway!”

Because of the physical and economic obstacles, the change to electric light was necessarily slow. Alternating current of 60-cycle frequency had yet to be accepted, rubber-covered wire approved, and voltages upped from 50 or 55 to 110. Even in 1910 there were still some ten million American homes lighted wholly by gas or oil. Nevertheless, when a scintillating 2000-bulb electric sign in New York City welcomed the advent of the 20th century, man-made electric incandescent lighting, albeit with timid steps, was on the march! When the Spanish-American War ended, the era of incandescent electric lighting had truly begun, and the growth-rate of doubling every decade had been established.

The Incandescent Lamp

Even before the century was well on its scientific way, it became evident that this was to be the era of rapid and dramatic lighting progress. The stage had been set during the late 1800’s by the development of voltage transformers, polyphase alternators and meters, and of good carbon-arc lamps, and promising lighting-fixture glassware for both gas and electric lamps. Distribution systems of 10 000 volts and higher were carrying alternating current afar to a plurality of lamp sockets, where incandescent carbon filaments in bulbs were, in growing numbers, duplicating the same quality of yellow but steady light that had amazed the visitors at the Columbian (Chicago) Exposition of 1893.

Carbon Filaments and Their Limitations

This, then, is where our story rightfully starts — with George Westinghouse’s promotion of the electric light as a means of demonstrating his a-c generating system. This was successfully accomplished in Chicago with 89,000 “stopper” lamps, consisting of a glass globe “corked” by a glass stopper, upon which a carbon filament and iron lead-in wires were mounted.

Mr. Westinghouse had entered the lamp business by purchasing the Sawyer-Man Electric Company in 1888, five years before the Columbian Exposition opened. The firm, founded ten years before by William E. Sawyer and Albon Man, Sawyer’s patent attorney, owned several basic lamp patents including one for a carbonized-fibre filament.

The Edison patent on a one-piece glass bulb, which had been in litigation at the time of the Fair, expired a few years thereafter and Westinghouse resumed manufacture of one-piece carbon-filament lamps — but with a notable improvement. Engineers found that when the filament was treated in a hydrocarbon atmosphere, lamp life was extended, and its burning