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C H A P T E R 1 Lighting in America: From Rush Lamps to Gasoliers Lighting systems used in the United States from the colonial period to the present evolved from candles and rush lamps to various types of oil lamps (eventually including kerosene), to gas lighting systems, and finally to electricity. This evolution represents a range of important technical and social innovations. As researcher Richard Rhodes has written, “Along its growth trajectory, an innovation interacts with existing techniques, depends on the development of a mediating framework for its effective absorption into the sociotechnical system, and changes its technological , economic, and social characteristics.”1 The Springfield Gas Machine clearly overlapped with existing kerosene lamp technology and with municipal gas systems in urban areas. Importantly, the earlier development of municipal gas lighting provided the mediating framework that allowed the ready acceptance and, in fact, anticipation of the Springfield system in homes and businesses outside the distribution area of urban gas companies. As the technology of portable gas systems improved with the introduction of mixing regulators and new more efficient burners, the social and economic characteristics of the system altered in a way that would allow it to compete effectively, albeit briefly, with the next innovation , electric light. Gas lighting researcher Mark Grisi has proposed three phases for conceptualizing the trajectory of innovation and acceptance: transition, equilibrium, and dominance. As he explains, in the “transition phase, two distinct lighting applications are advancing due to technological developments. Each application has its advantages and disadvantages, but they are primarily competing for economic proficiency and cultural acceptance.” In the next stage, “each of the systems are equal in stature . . . either mechanism may excel based upon the validity of the technology, the comparable economic incentives, and/or acceptance into the cultural mainstream.” Finally, in the dominance phase, the “newer-based technology . . . causes the downturn or elimination of the previous technology-based mechanism .” In this final phase, Grisi reports, “there can also be absorption of the previous technology by the dominant force that may or may not supplement the newer technology.”2 2 Lighting in America A large portion of the nineteenth century was one of transition for gas lighting , in that while gas was becoming the standard by which domestic and commercial lighting was judged in urban contexts, kerosene/liquid-fuel lamps remained the dominant lighting system for technical and economic reasons. In some respects , kerosene/liquid-fuel lamps and gas light maintained a sort of uneasy equilibrium during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. While gas lighting may have even achieved some dominance in this period, it never really eclipsed the fuel-oil lamp as the principal lighting system in the way that electric lighting eventually would. With the introduction of electric lighting in the 1880s, the phases of transition and equilibrium proceeded quite rapidly and electric systems quickly captured the market for kerosene and gas lighting, becoming the dominant urban lighting source by the 1920s; it was another twenty years before electricity rained supreme in rural areas.3 The transition from earlier lighting forms to gas and electric, however, did more than simply mark major technological advances, it represented a fundamental cultural shift in the way in which people interacted with fire and energy. As Margaret and Robert Hazen have noted, “although the need for fire remained unchanged , America’s fire habits changed dramatically over the course of the nineteenth century. Technological innovations, the introduction of new fuels and the transition to a consumer-based society conspired to alter forever the ways people handled and thought about the open flame.”4 They summarize this transition as one in which “the user’s role was forever transformed from energy producer to energy consumer.” Centralized energy delivery systems for gas and electricity altered individuals’ independent control over fire, “precluding hands-on manipulation ” of most operations involved in creating heat and light. The individual household fire had been a fundamental aspect of daily life, and its loss represented a process whereby “domestic fire users . . . became increasingly insulated from the open flame and the mechanics of fire manipulation.” Over the course of century, Hazen and Hazen argue, the “age of the axe was irrevocably transformed into the age of the fuel bill.”5 It comes as no surprise, then, that the hearth and fireplace took on such an important symbolic role within the Colonial Revival and Arts and Crafts movements; the lost of control over energy production was yet another symptom of the industrial and technology...

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