Disenchanted Night: The Industrialization of Light in the Nineteenth Century

Opie, John; Schivelbusch, Wolfgang; Davies, Angela M.

doi:10.2307/3105688

Cited by 9 publications

(13 citation statements)

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“…At the same time, as economists, we are not trying to provide a formal historical analysis of artificial lighting. The richness and complexity of treatment that this would deserve is beyond our scope and skills (O'Dea 1956, Schivelbusch 1988, Bower 1998. This paper offers a modest illustration of the dramatic transformations that have occurred in the cost and provision of artificial illumination over the last seven hundred years.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Seven Centuries of Energy Services: The Price and Use of Light in the United Kingdom (1300-2000)1

Fouquet¹,

Pearson²

2006

The Energy Journal

212

108

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Before the mid-eighteenth century, most people lived in near-complete darkness except in the presence of sunlight and moonlight. Since then, the provision of artificial light has been revolutionised by a series of innovations in appliances, fuels, infrastructures and institutions that have enabled the growing demands of economic development for artificial light to be met at dramatically lower costs: by the year 2000, while United Kingdom GDP per capita was 15 times its 1800 value, lighting services cost less than one three thousandth of their 1800 value, per capita use was 6,500 times greater and total lighting consumption was 25,000 times higher than in 1800. The economic history of light shows how focussing on developments in energy service provision rather than simply on energy use and prices can reveal the 'true' declines in costs, enhanced levels of consumption and welfare gains that have been achieved. While emphasising the value of past experience, the paper also warns against the dangers of over-reliance on past trends for the long-run forecasting of energy consumption given the potential for the introduction of new technologies and fuels, and for rebound and saturation effects.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Seven Centuries of Energy Services: The Price and Use of Light in the United Kingdom (1300-2000)1

Fouquet¹,

Pearson²

2006

The Energy Journal

212

108

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Likewise, nights have been seen as a time and place for nefarious activities and supernatural 3 This is an extremely brief overview that paints complex social developments and value conflicts in broad strokes. A great deal more nuance to the issues highlighted here can be found in book-length studies or edited collections on the history of lighting and cities at night (e.g., Schivelbusch, 1988;Nye, 1990;Schlör, 1998;Palmer, 2000;Ekirch, 2005;Koslofsky, 2011;Isenstadt et al, 2014;Edensor, 2017;Dunn and Edensor, 2021); via recent scholarship into the relationship between social practices at night, darkness, and race that further complicates questions of power and surveillance within urban nights (e.g., Browne, 2015;Elcott, 2021); through analysing the related spatial and social differentiation within different cities created by lighting choices (e.g., Williams, 2008;Edensor and Dunn, 2021); and through delving deeper into other political forces closely intertwined with electric light, such as capitalism and changing labour conditions (e.g., Isenstadt, 2018;Shaw, 2018). However, while these issues would add depth, nuance, and perhaps some diverging perspectives to this argument, the overarching continuity of value conflicts within urban nightscapes -and critically their continual manifestation in/through the specific infrastructure of street lighting -would remain.…”

Section: Fear Of the Darkmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…But, as Schivelbusch (1988, p. 96) asks, 'if public lighting in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries did not really light up the street, then what was the point of it?' While the fear of spirits and demons at night was diminishing in cities, other dangers remained a persistent issue; improved public illumination was one method authorities utilized to combat rising crime and enact social control (Schivelbusch, 1988;Ekirch, 2005;Brox, 2014). In Disenchanted Night, Schivelbusch (1988, p.87) asserts that public lighting represented a 'symbolism of domination', a form of authority and policing.…”

Section: Illuminating the Nightmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…After succeeding in their revolution, they used lampposts as makeshift gallows to hang publicly members of the overthrown regime. This was Paris in the late eighteenth century, during the French Revolution (Schivelbusch, 1988;Alvarez, 1996).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As examples: in Catalonia, no more than four men could walk together at night(Ekirch, 2005); in Paris, all houses had to be locked at curfew and the keys given to the magistrate(Schivelbusch, 1988) and other cities went as far as to lay logs or chains across main streets to prevent travel at night(Ekirch, 2005).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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The streetlights are watching you: A historical perspective on value change and public lighting

Stone¹

2022

PROM

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This article investigates questions of ‘designing for value change’ via a ubiquitous, yet often taken-for-granted, technology – streetlights. Smart city trends are spurring a new generation of streetlights, with lampposts being fitted with sensors, cameras and a host of other technologies aimed at monitoring and data collection. This has raised concerns about privacy, surveillance and power relations, arguably creating a changing value landscape for streetlights. However, the article will argue that, while smart streetlights may seem to instantiate a moment of value change, they in fact represent a continuity of values fundamental to the very foundations of public lighting. They embody a set of values – and value tensions – that can be traced back to the origins of modern public lighting in the seventeeth–eighteenth centuries. Moreover, urban nights occupy a liminal space at the boundaries of social order, which likewise informs streetlights’ technical functions and symbolic meanings. Appreciating this continuity of values (and value tensions) is necessary for analysing the potential impacts of new innovations, as well as the value landscape that will inevitably shape their design and use. In adopting a historical perspective on a specific case study, as well as proposing the notion of value continuity, the article offers generalizable insights, as well as future research directions, for the theory and practice of designing for value change.

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Light Activism: alternative urban nightscapes

Flugelman

2024

IOP Conf. Ser.: Earth Environ. Sci.

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Since their beginnings, artificial lighting technologies have been used as a tool by those in power to express their authority and ensure their control of cities. State and commercial hegemony determine urban lighting, which has a substantial spatial, semiotic, emotional, and physiological effect on us. Lighting conditions imposed from the top down inform our bodily experience of the night. LED technology is revolutionizing artificial public lighting. Nevertheless, critical inquiry about its potential uses is sorely lacking. This research will explore the capacity of collective light interventions to turn public spaces into more inclusive nightscapes. It will focus on community-driven projects where the use of lighting contributes to the production of alternative urban experiences. The research engages methodological issues by asking how lighting tools can potentially contribute to community empowerment. Can lighting actions in public spaces propose other ways of interacting and other ways of experiencing the night? This paper revolves around critical lighting practices. It shows how the use of light can foster citizen engagement and ignite new nocturnal imaginaries as the perception of the night is reshaped to restore communities’ right to the city. The intention is to bolster critical awareness regarding the use of light and the power underpinning its instrumentalization. This text will also shed light on the effect ephemeral collective light interventions have on public spaces and its perception.

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Disenchanted Night: The Industrialization of Light in the Nineteenth Century

Cited by 9 publications

References 0 publications

Seven Centuries of Energy Services: The Price and Use of Light in the United Kingdom (1300-2000)1

Seven Centuries of Energy Services: The Price and Use of Light in the United Kingdom (1300-2000)1

The streetlights are watching you: A historical perspective on value change and public lighting

Light Activism: alternative urban nightscapes

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