I know people don’t think of it that way, but sometimes technological innovations have profound sociological effects. I invite your attention to the Cotton Engine (invented by Connecticut’s very own Eli Whitney) which totally changed the economics of Cotton cultivation in favor of Race Slavery and Air Conditioning which made large areas of the United States that were previously uninhabitable (Florida, Texas, Arizona, Nevada), habitable.
Also this-
The sci-fi future of lamp-posts
Rory Hyde, The Guardian
Thursday 13 November 2014 08.02 EST
In 1697, a few short years after street lighting made its London debut, one commentator remarked on how this new technology was affecting the nightlife:
“The scatt’ring light gilt all the gaudy way, Some people rose and thought it day. The plying punks crept into holes, Who walk’d the streets before by sholes.”
The night had once been a time of transgression, where “plying punks” (prostitutes) could walk the streets freely “by sholes” (as in a school of fish), but street lighting had changed all that. These dark hours of rebellion were now claimed for the world of public appearances. Street lighting sought to impose discipline on the unruly city streets, opening it up as a safe time for the upper classes to socialise and conduct business, pushing out the punks.
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The earliest recorded forms of public street lighting existed in Italy in the 16th century. Ropes soaked in pitch oil were ignited in iron baskets known as cressets, usually outside palaces. The breakthrough that led to our modern street lights was made in the 1660s in Amsterdam by the painter and inventor Jan van der Heyden (1637-1712), who designed a lantern that drew air through it to keep soot from accumulating on the glass. His design was much imitated, so that after centuries of darkness, the installation of oil lanterns in European cities happened very rapidly. As Craig Koslofsky outlines in his terrific history of the night, Evening’s Empire: “In 1660, no European city had permanently illuminated its streets, but by 1700 consistent and reliable street lighting had been established in Amsterdam, Paris, Turin, London, Copenhagen, Hamburg and Vienna.”The use of street lighting as a form of control can be seen most clearly in Lille, one of the first cities to have lighting installed, only months after Paris and Amsterdam. Here, public lighting was imposed by the French military, who had recently captured the city. Lighting was deployed to pacify the unruly locals and provide greater security at night. It was only decades later that city correspondence referred to the lighting as a “public convenience”. But just as the invention of the ship was also the invention of the shipwreck, this attempt to reduce criminal activity through street lighting inadvertently created a new crime: smashing lanterns. Penalties were severe. In Leipzig, lantern-smashers were deterred by the threat of cutting off one’s right hand.
While the activities of the traditional owners of the night – the young and the restless – may have been marginalised by street lighting, many others stood to benefit from it. In Koslofsky’s book, an etching of Leipzig from 1702 illustrates the social effects. A man points to something in the distance, in arm with his well-dressed female partner; two men doff their hats, where before they wouldn’t have recognised each other; another man reads a book under the glow of the public lantern. As light extends into the night, so do the day’s activities. All of this appears positive and useful – but for whom? This depiction of a well-heeled class engaged in genteel activities suggests it was the bourgeoisie who benefitted, as street lighting made it safe enough for them to brave the evenings.
The longer day was not universally welcomed. The editor of Tatler wrote in 1710 that the lighting of London had “thrown business and pleasure into the hours of rest, and by that means made the natural night by half as long as it should be”. Our complaints today of the “always on” lifestyle dictated by the mobile phone find an interesting precedent here. Just as the phone allows you to be reached at any hour, street lighting destroyed the anonymity of the night, when people bearing lanterns could move about unrecognised. One now had to be dressed up for the street, further eroding the boundary between work and rest.
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