A Brief History of Man-Made Lighting
From Whaling to Coal Burning
Cleaning Kerosene Lamps
A woman cleaning kerosene lamps on the front porch of her house. The soot on the inside of kerosene lamps could catch fire if it was not cleaned away. View the original source document: WHI 11549
One of the most profound differences between our lives and those of earlier people is that we spend many hours awake after the sun sets.
For nearly all of the 12,000 years that humans have lived in Wisconsin, sunset marked the end of each day's useful activity. To work after dark required people to create light. Available fuels, usually wood or animal fats, were inconvenient to get, expensive to consume and smoky when burned. Most people simply went to sleep soon after nightfall and rose with the sun.
Then, in the early 19th century, the Industrial Revolution transformed this ancient sleep pattern as four new fuels were discovered in quick succession.
Whale Oil
Oil from sperm whales was first mixed with candle wax in New England at the end of the 18th century, and soon a purified version was being burned in glass lamps. Unfortunately, it was hard to get: George Burchard, of Sheboygan Co., kept a diary of his 1837-1839 voyage on a whaling ship, before he came to Wisconsin. Although it gave us "Moby Dick," the whale oil industry's high costs led entrepreneurs to look for other oils to burn.
Kerosene
In the 1850s, petroleum extracted from the mountains of Pennsylvania was processed into kerosene. This clear liquid was comparatively cheap, easy to use and threw off so much illumination that it was even used in lighthouses like those along the Wisconsin lake shores. Kerosene lamps remained a standard feature of many Wisconsin rural homes well into the 20th century.
Gas
Electric Light
A woman pushes a button on an electric light switch on the wall in her farmhouse. View the original source document: WHI 82125
Also in the 1850s, scientists found ways to extract natural gas from the ground and to manufacture it from coal. Gas could be stored in containers or, eventually, channelled through pipes into cities, where it fueled lamps such as this one in the Wisconsin Capitol. It burned bright but hot, and in 1904 the Capitol was destroyed in a fire caused by untended gas lighting.
Electricity
Finally, in the 1880s, Thomas Edison invented a way to create light by sending electricity through a tiny wick inside a special glass bulb. Although Edison invented the device at his lab in New Jersey, the first home to be lighted by electricity was in Appleton, Wisconsin, and the first electricity offered for sale to consumers was put on the market there. That story is told in the "Wisconsin Magazine of History." You can still visit Hearthstone, the Appleton house where electric lighting became a reality.
Soon electricity was powering everything from table lamps to streetcars. But that's a different story. If you'd like to know more about early lighting, the Wilson Museum in Castine, Maine, has a handy short summary of how earlier generations tried to ward off darkness, before the age of electricity.
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