Street lighting

“ Inhabitants of the cities of the present time are inclined to think that crime is common on the streets at night, but what would it be without adequate artificial light? Two centuries ago in a city like London a smoking grease-lamp, a candle, or a basket of pine knots here and there afforded the only street-lighting, and these were extinguished by eleven o'clock. Lawlessness was hatched and hidden by darkness, and even the lantern or torch served more to mark the victim than to protect him. ”

“ Thirty years ago electric lighting was not in vogue, and the system of street lamps was far less complete than at present, although the gas burned in them may not have been any worse. The lamps were much fewer and farther between, and the light which they emitted had a feeble, sickly aspect, and did not reach any distance into the moist and murky atmosphere. And so the night was dismal enough, and the few people upon the street were visible only as they passed directly beneath the lamps, or in front of lighted windows; seeming at other times like moving shadows against a black ground. ”

“ The lighting of the street-lamps, which started one by one into existence, and the conflict with the fading daylight of the uneasily beating flame, that was swept from side to side in the wind like a woman’s hair—these things made his surroundings seem still shadowier and less real. ”

“ It is difficult to believe that civilization has traveled so far in a single century, but from this early beginning of street-lighting social progress received a great impetus. Artificial light-sources were feeble at that time, but they made the streets safer and by means of them social intercourse was extended. The people increased their hours of activity and commerce, industry, and knowledge grew apace.
The open gas-jet and kerosene-flame lamps held forth on the streets until within the memory of middle-aged persons of to-day. ”

“ We recommend that, where a system of street lighting exists, direct illumina- tion should be provided. It would be undesirable to discourage experiment and improvement in the illumination of signs by restricting the methods by which a satisfactory standard of illumination is achieved, but it is our view that where conditions permit of its use, external illumination is to be preferred to internal illumination because of the better daytime performance and greater simplicity and ease of maintenance of the externally illuminated sign. ”

“ The city began its own public lighting in April 1895, having a large plant on the river near the centre of the city. It lights the streets and public buildings, but makes no provision for commercial business. The lighting is excellent, and the cost is probably less than could be obtained from a private company. The street lighting is done partly from pole and arm lights, but largely from steel towers from 100 ft. to 180 ft. in height, with strong reflected lights at the top. The city also owns two portable asphalt plants, and thus makes a saving in the cost of street repairing and resurfacing. ”

“ But in reckoning the cost of street-lighting to-day how many take into account the value of safety to life and property and the saving occasioned by the reduction in the police-force necessary to patrol the cities and towns? ”

“ Much of street lighting is of the silhouette type, depending on the relative positions of the observer, the illuminant, and the object to be seen. As we approach a post or sand pile on the street it appears first as a black object in silhouette, as we come nearer the reflected light becomes more intense and the object is seen in detail. There seems to be a sort of twilight zone between these two conditions where the visibility is least. The silhouette vision appears to be best when the intensity of the reflected light is least, and vice versa for the detail or direct vision. ”

“ In the use of arc lamps for street and public lighting, the question of the distribution of light on the horizontal surface is all-important. In order that street surfaces may be well lighted, the minimum illumination should Street arc lighting. not fall below 0.1 candle-foot, and in general, in well-lighted streets, the maximum illumination will be 1 candle-foot and upwards. ”

“ There are millions of these lights now in use in this country. They are used not only for lighting the rooms of hotels and private houses, but also for lighting steamships, railway trains, and street cars, and for nearly all indoor illumination. This light is not as cheap as kerosene or gaslight, but it is so convenient and so simple, requiring no daily care, that it is rapidly coming into use in all towns and cities. ”

“ Placing one of the candles down and lighting others, he turned to see that everything was in order. We opened the window and looked out to the main street—long, narrow, almost in darkness. Electric lamps here and there gave little light. "Why so?" we asked the landlord.
"Because we get our motive force from the river; and just now the river is almost dry," he replied. "So they have to work with a machine, and the machine is not strong enough to light the whole town. That is why I don't have it in the hotel. One day we should have illumination, the next total darkness. ”

“ It has been found by experience that the ordinary type of open arc lamp with vertical carbons included in an opalescent globe cannot compete in point of cost with modern improvements in gas lighting as a means of street illumination. The violet colour of the light and the sharp shadows, and particularly the non-illuminated area just beneath the lamp, are grave disadvantages. ”

“ All urban sections of the interregional system shall be lighted by artificial fixed-source illumination to provide the maximum degree of safety and convenience of movement at night. At all connections illumination shall be provided for such distance and in such degree as may be necessary to provide a safe transition between the normal system lighting on the interregional highway and the normal degree of illumination on the connecting street. ”

“ Unshaded light-sources are too prevalent in the industries. Improper lighting is likely to cause deep shadows wherein many dangers may be hidden. On the street the glare from automobile head-lamps is very prevalent and nearly everybody may testify from experience to the dangers of glare. Even the glaring locomotive head-lamp has been responsible for many casualties. ”

“ No light surpasses the arc light in brilliancy, excepting the magnesium light. There are few cities in this country and Europe that do not employ the arc lamp as a means of street, station, and large-area lighting, owing to its superiority as an illuminant and the wonderful policing effect it has upon the slum sections. ”

“ For indoor, public room or factory lighting, inverted arc lamps are sometimes employed. In this case the positive carbon is the lower one, and the lamp is carried in an inverted metallic reflector shield, so that the light is chiefly thrown up on the ceiling, whence it is diffused all round. The alternating-current arc is not only less efficient in mean spherical candle-power per watt of electric power absorbed, but its distribution of light is disadvantageous for street purposes. ”

“ The electric light at its point of junction with the main street does not penetrate half-way to the stage entrance, and the blackness thereabout is diluted with the rays of the lonely, indifferent gas-lamp that projects above the old wooden door. Farther on, an old-fashioned street-lamp marks the place where the alley turns to wind about until it eventually reaches another main street. ”

“ But even as he is speaking, a form, tall and slight, starts out from the shadows a few paces ahead, and pauses for a flash of time under the uncertain light of the solitary street-lamp, which lamps in our aspiring villages are placed at undeterminable distances from each other, wherever one long straggling street happens to meet another, seeming to say to the night pedestrian, “you have safely traversed the impenetrable darkness thus far, behold I invite you to a continuation of the same.” ”

“ While fixed sources of light are generally to be preferred, other methods of outlining the road at night, such as the use of reflectors, may be considered as supplements and possibly as a substitute for fixed-source lighting. ”

“ Throughout the evening the streets are utterly deserted, and as, moreover, they are badly illuminated with gas, the aspect on a dark night is not cheerful. But on a bright, moonlit night, such as that to which I have referred, artificial lighting is altogether dispensed with. ”

“ Immense electric signs, furnished at less than cost and some of them as big as the buildings upon the roofs of which they were erected, began to make constellations in the city sky; buildings in the principal down-town squares were studded, for little or nothing, with outside incandescent lights as thickly as wall space could be found for them, and the men whose only automobiles are street-cars awoke to the fact that their city was becoming intensely metropolitan ”

“ The task of adequately lighting lofty city buildings has been greatly minimized by the introduction of many forms of reflecting and intensifying contrivances, which are used to deflect light into those apartments into which daylight does not directly penetrate, and which would otherwise require the use of artificial light to render them of any use ”

“ There is room, and will doubtless continue to be room, for all methods of artificial lighting, and it is not likely that, for many years to come, we shall witness anything more than the extensive use of electricity—public buildings and private residences, streets, and squares better illuminated than at present, and the new form of light keeping pace with the progress of older and well-tried institutions. ”

“ At night, again, under the purple, star-lit sky, street life in the central region of New York is indescribably exhilarating. From Union Square to Herald Square, and even further up, Broadway and many of the cross streets flash out at dusk into the most brilliant illumination. Theatres, restaurants, stores, are outlined in incandescent lamps; the huge electric trolleys come sailing along in an endless stream, profusely jewelled with electricity; and down the thickly-gemmed vista of every cross street one can see the elevated trains, like luminous winged serpents, skimming through the air. ”

“ Along the reaches of the street Held in a lunar synthesis, Whispering lunar incantations Disolve the floors of memory And all its clear relations, Its divisions and precisions, Every street lamp that I pass Beats like a fatalistic drum, And through the spaces of the dark Midnight shakes the memory As a madman shakes a dead geranium. Half-past one, The street lamp sputtered, The street lamp muttered, The street lamp said, "Regard that woman Who hesitates toward you in the light of the door Which opens on her like a grin. ”

“ Not only is there no other means of illumination generally but the street-lamps burning gas, which are sufficiently widely spaced,—and, in the case of the boulevard just mentioned, masked by trees,—but all the house-fronts are tightly closed and as black as night. One may cross the Place Vendôme, five minutes from the Opéra, in the middle of the evening in the middle of the season, and have barely light enough to avoid other pedestrians. All around the great circle the houses show no gleam of light in their windows, with two or three exceptions, and the effect is anything but cheerful. ”

“ In the evening the city was illuminated with lamps, cressets, and other lights "without number," Cheapside presenting a most brilliant effect, with the bonfires blazing up from the [46] ground, lights of different kinds gleaming from the frontages of the houses, from end to end of the street, and multitudes of men, with lighted cressets on their shoulders, marching hither and thither, and mingling with others bearing torches, a scene infinitely more picturesque than the commonplace gas illuminations of the present. ”

“ The illumination of a city by night, making its streets to be lighted as if by day, is a more interesting and important fact in human history than any political conflict or mere change of rulers.
About the beginning of the eighth decade of this century the project of introducing the electric light for general purposes of illumination began to be agitated. It was at once perceived that the advantages of such lighting were as many as they were obvious. The light is so powerful as to render practicable the performance of many mechanical operations as easily by night as by day. ”

“ Electric light especially, with its harsh white glare, which no expedients have as yet overcome, has taken from our drawing-rooms all air of privacy and distinction. In passageways and offices, electricity is of great service; but were it not that all "modern improvements" are thought equally applicable to every condition of life, it would be difficult to account for the adoption of a mode of lighting which makes the salon look like a railway-station, the dining-room like a restaurant. ”

“ The lamps in the street die out. The sickly winter dawn comes over the great city. The hush and calm still linger; only now and then a dark phantom form issues from a silent gateway, and hurries along the pavement, as though fearful of the growing light. ”

“ While a hundred residents will effectually darken their windows, there are the few thoughtless ones who burn gas beneath their skylights, or who do not sufficiently cover one window—often a staircase-window—or servants who go to bed neglectful to draw their curtains across the blinds.
Then there are shaded street lamps burning at dangerous corners, or at cross-roads, and these, provided the ground is wet after rain, reflect a zone of bright light which acts as an excellent guide to aviators aloft. ”