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Drawing of Charles Brush's electric arc lighting system being demonstrated from a tower in Clevland's Public Square in 1879.
Brush Light Clevland from Whitney, Charles P., Brush-Swan electric light, 1884, General Collections.

Lighting America: The Early Adoption of Electric Light

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Electric lighting began illuminating the streets of America in the late 19th century.  Prior to that, oil lamps followed by gas lamps lit early America.  Two key figures that led to adopting electric lighting in America were Charles Brush and Thomas Edison.  Brush invented an electric dynamo arc light system which he demonstrated in Clevland, Ohio’s Public Square in 1879 (see featured image above). According to Chris Ronayne, one of Brush’s arc lamps produced the equivalent glow of 4,000 candles.  Compared to oil or gas lamps which required someone to light them every evening, electric lighting was more efficient and less expensive.

The first municipality to obtain electric lighting was Wabash, Indiana in 1880.  The town purchased and installed Brush’s arc lighting system with 4 lamps atop the courthouse, which illuminated the small town.

Sanborn Fire Insurance map depicting the Wabash, Indiana courthouse in pink.
Section of Sheet 4 Sanborn Fire Insurance map of Wabash, Wabash County, Indiana, 1887, Geography and Map Division.

 

Brush deployed his arc lighting system to several other cities across America such as New York, Boston, Philadelphia, New Orleans, and Chicago.  Thomson Houston Company bought Brush Electric Company in 1889 and later merged with the Edison General Electric Co.  in 1892 to form General Electric.

Thomas Edison invented the first practical and commercially viable incandescent light bulb in 1880 and developed the first modern electric utility system at the Peal Street Station in lower Manhattan, New York City in 1882.  The location of the Pearl Street Station can be seen on the 1894 Sanborn Fire Insurance map (the closest date to 1882 for Manhattan) below at 255-257 Peal Street (in blue labeled buildings vacant).  According to Matthew Josephson in Edison: A Biography, the Pearl Street Station was serving 508 customers with 10,164 lamps by 1884, but burned down in 1890.

Sanborn Fire Insurance map showing Edison's Pearl Street Electric Station.
Section of sheet 5 from Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from New York, Bronx, Manhattan, New York, 1890 – 1902, Vol. 1, 1894, Geography and Map Division.

A few weeks after building steam powered dynamos (generators) fed by coal at the New York Pearl Street Station in September of 1882, the Appleton, Wisconsin residence of Henry James Rogers known as Hearthstonebecame the first in the U.S. to be lighted with a water-powered dynamo through the Edison power station and electric system. Rogers was the manager of the Appleton Pulp and Paper Mill company, which also benefited from Edison’s hydroelectric power station, both shown below on the 1895 Sanborn Insurance map of Appleton, Wisconsin.  

Sanborn Fire Insurance map showing Appleton Pulp and Paper Company and Edison Electric Light Company.
Sheet 30 of Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Appleton, Outagamie County, Wisconsin, 1895, Geography and Map Division.
Photograph of living room of Hearthstone residence with table and fireplace.
Highsmith, Carol, Living room at Hearthstone, the 1882 Victorian mansion that was the world’s first home to be lighted by a central hydroelectric station, Appleton, Wisconsin, between 1980 and 2006, Prints and Photographs Division.

Although the Edison Electric Light Company installed street lighting at the intersections of 7th and 15th Streets with Pennsylvania Avenue NW in the city of Washington D.C. by 1881, public funding of streetlights and even the White House did not happen until a decade later in 1891.  The 1894 District of Columbia Engineering Department Street Lamps map below shows this slow adoption of electric lighting with just 327 electric lamps compared to 747 oil and 6,246 gas lamps in the city.

Map showing distribution of oil, gas, and electric street lights in Washington, D.C.
District of Columbia. Engineer Department, Map of the city of Washington showing street lamps, 1894, Geography and Map Division.

In contrast to the White House, Iolani Palace in Honolulu, Hawaii was electrically lighted by 1886, followed by the city of Honolulu in 1888.  While circumnavigating the world in 1881 King Kalākaua of the Hawaiian Kingdom experienced the electrical exhibition at the World Fair in Paris, France and subsequently met with Thomas Edison in New York on his way back to Hawaii.  Edison’s incandescent bulbs were demonstrated to the King, convincing him of adopting the technology in his Kingdom. The 1914 Sanborn map below shows Iolani Palace in pink with the label “Executive Bldg. Territory of Hawaii” (the Hawaiian Kingdom was overthrown in 1893 and became a U.S. Territory in 1898).  It also indicates “no heat, lights: elec-” showing that the building still had electric lighting.

Sanborn map showing Iolani palace in pink in the City of Honolulu.
Sheet 55 of Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Honolulu, Oahu County, Hawaii, 1914, Geography and Map Division.

This brief exploration of the early adoption of electric lighting in America demonstrates how maps can be utilized to investigate the historical development of this significant technology.

Comments (3)

  1. Thanks very much for posting this example of electrical archaeology. One looks forward to seeing an animated map of electrical light and power installations as they proliferate and network over time through technical, commercial, and political changes. Edmond Russell and Lauren Winkler have accomplished something similar with their interactive map, “Uniting the States with Telegraphs, 1844-1862”: https://telegraph.library.cmu.edu/.

  2. Kudos on a great contribution to telecommunications history and archaeology. It’s not hard to imagine overlaying these on Google Maps/Earth and complementing them with contemporary images of buildings, streets, interiors, and people. For more inspiration, see Edmund Russell and Lauren Winkler’s interactive map at Carnegie-Mellon University, “Uniting the States with Telegraphs, 1844-1862” (no link b/c it apparently dq’ed my previous comment).

  3. Fascinating topic! I’ve had the opportunity to research different aspects of the history of modern infrastructure. Americans would benefit from knowing more about how road, air, telephone, telegraph, electrical, and other infrastructure has been developed over the past 200 years. Lessons learned from these should inform the deployment of sustainable solar, wind, and carbon-reducing technologies happening now.

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