A fun street lamp from Stratford Upon Avon

The streets in towns and cities have always been lit in a random fashion, with lighting given by the owner of the house to just that bit of thoroughfare outside the house.  [From personal experience I might add that pavements throughout the world follow the same pattern.]  In ancient Rome a slave responsible for lighting the oil lamps in front of Roman villas was called a lanternarius.

In the UK, until the latter part of the 17^th century, it was very dark at night in our villages, towns and cities for our streets were mostly unlit.  If you needed to visit anyone at night, for a fee a ‘linkboy’ could be hired to carry a flaming torch.  Although there was illumination from candles and oil lamps from inside buildings, many houses were shuttered at night for privacy and warmth, so most people relied on moonlight and starlight when travelling outside at night.

During the 17^th century, experiments were made by English inventors in using coal gas for illumination and gradually by the first decade of the 19^th century several factories were lit by gas around Birmingham and Lancashire.

George Augustus Lee, the co-owner of a cotton mill in Salford was fascinated by the evolving gas technology and in 1805 arranged for his new Engine Twist Mill at Chapel Street to be lit by gas. The following year he had the street dug up for pipes to be laid and Chapel Street became the first in the world to be lit by gas. The introduction of gas lighting into factories allowed for longer working hours and increased production.

The world’s first gas-powered street lighting, in the form of 13 lamps, was installed by Frederick Winsor on Pall Mall, London in 1807 to celebrate the birthday of King George III.  Pall Mall was a road travelled daily by royalty and the leading people of the time as they passed to and from the home of the Prince Regent so the lighting would have been a notable advertisement for the new invention.  In  December 1808 Westminster Bridge was being lit by gas-fuelled streetlamps and by the 1820s more than 40,000 gas lamps were being used along 215 miles of London’s streets.  Gas lighting was also being used to light shops, theatres and factories.

Unfortunately, there was the problem of gas explosions.  The explosion in October 1865 at the Nine Elms gasworks in Battersea killed 11 workers. The first gas powered traffic lights were installed on Westminster Bridge in December 1868, but they exploded and injured the policeman who operated them.  Nonetheless, by 1859 around a thousand gas works had been created to cope with the demand.  

The growth in the production of cast iron facilitated the introduction of street lamp posts and throughout the 19^th century there were innovations that made gas lighting more efficient.

Almost all of London’s street lighting is now supplied by electricity, providing a brighter light and requiring less maintenance. There are, however, around 1,300 gas lamps still in operation in London, including those around The Mall, Buckingham Palace, the royal parks, and The Temple area south of Fleet Street. About 1,000 of them are maintained by British Gas under contract with the individual owners.

Electric arc street lighting which gave out an intense light was first introduced in London in 1878 and quickly spread, leading to the replacement of most gas street lighting.   Light was produced by an electric current which arced between two carbon rods – hence the name. The development of electric generators made them a practicable solution for lighting public spaces or at the growing number of factories which were lit by night. 

Electricity pylon being erected, 1920s, Science Museum Group Collection

Arc lights could illuminate huge areas: those installed in 1860s New York were on tall, metal constructions called  ‘moonlight towers’  and they lit up the street and several blocks around with a blinding light. Some were even used to light fields, enabling agricultural labourers to work into the night.

Due to the intensity of these lights they got extremely hot – the arc reaches several thousand degrees Celsius – and so the lamps needed to be placed at height and well out of reach. 

The invention of the incandescent lamp bulb took decades, the difficulties being in making a durable filament that produced a bright and steady light, and creating the best possible vacuum inside the glass bulb to prolong the filament’s life. The first successful bulbs used ‘parchmentized thread’ made from cotton as the filament. Other materials that were tried out to produce a filament included carbon, platinum, carbonised bamboo and even carbonised human hair.  In time, incandescent lamps which were cheaper, brighter and lasted longer, largely replaced the arc lights.

The yellow glow from low-pressure sodium (LPS) lamps became commonplace after World War 2 for their low power consumption and long life,  Currently the majority of our streets are illuminated by LED or induction street lights, which emit a very bright, white light and are energy-efficient.

In 2007, the Civil Twilight Collective created a variant of the conventional LED streetlight, namely the Lunar-resonant streetlight.  These lights increase or decrease the intensity of the streetlight according to the lunar light. This streetlight design attempts to reduce energy consumption as well as light pollution.

Street lighting has come a very long way since the employment of ‘link boys’.