Brilliant (36 page)

Acknowledgments

Bibliographic Note

Notes

Index

I'm especially grateful to the MacDowell Colony for providing me with the best of places to work, and to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for a fellowship that granted me time to complete this book. The Bowdoin College Library; the Curtis Memorial Library in Brunswick, Maine; and the Maine Interlibrary Loan Service were of immeasurable help to me during my years of research. Gratitude also to the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, New York; to the New Bedford Whaling Museum Research Library; and to David Low at Consolidated Edison.

I've had the support of many friends during the writing of this book, in particular: Elizabeth Brown, who first put the idea for it in my head; E. F. Weisslitz, who had no end of enthusiasm for it; Andrea Sulzer, always curious; and John Bisbee, who lent me his finely tuned ear for the entire time. Many thanks to Cynthia Cannell for her enduring support on behalf of my work; to Barbara Jatkola for her careful work copyediting the manuscript; and, as always, to Deanne Urmy for her intuition, her precision, her faith.

I am especially indebted to the following books for insight and inspiration: Gaston Bachelard,
The Flame of a Candle,
translated by Joni Caldwell (Dallas: Dallas Institute Publications, 1988); William T. O'Dea,
The Social History of Lighting
(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958); Wolfgang Schivelbush,
Disenchanted Night: The Industrialization of Light in the Nineteenth Century,
translated by Angela Davies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); and Mario Ruspoli,
The Cave of Lascaux: The Final Photographs
(New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1987).

The first section of
Brilliant
owes much to A. Roger Ekirch,
At Day's Close: Night in Times Past
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2005); Yi-Fu Tuan, "The City: Its Distance from Nature,"
Geographical Review
68, no. 1 (January 1978); Louis-Sébastien Mercier,
Panorama of Paris,
edited by Jeremy D. Popkin (University Park: Pennsylvania University Press, 1999); Richard Ellis,
Men and Whales
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991); and D. Alan Stevenson,
The World's Lighthouses Before 1820
(London: Oxford University Press, 1959). Chapter 2 owes a particular debt to Wolfgang Schivelbush for insight concerning lanterns and the French Revolution, and to Yi-Fu Tuan for thoughts on cities and their separation from the natural world.

For the chapters on electricity, I'm grateful to Brian Bowers,
Lengthening the Day: A History of Lighting Technology
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); Philip Dray,
Stealing God's Thunder: Benjamin Franklin's Lightning Rod and the Invention of America
(New York: Random House, 2005); Jill Jonnes,
Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World
(New York: Random House, 2004); Robert Friedel and Paul Israel,
Edison's Electric Light: Biography of an Invention
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1987); and Pierre Berton,
Niagara: A History of the Falls
(New York: Kodansha International, 1997).

For the chapters on early-twentieth-century light, I relied largely on Morris Llewellyn Cooke, ed.,
Giant Power: Large Scale Electrical Development as a Social Factor
(Philadelphia: Academy of Political and Social Science, 1925); David E. Nye,
Electrifying America: Social Meanings of a New Technology, 1880–1940
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992); Katherine Jellison,
Entitled to Power: Farm Women and Technology, 1913–1963
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993); Robert A. Caro,
The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982); Mary Ellen Romeo,
Darkness to Daylight: An Oral History of Rural Electrification in Pennsylvania and New Jersey
(Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Rural Electric Association, 1986); James Agee and Walker Evans,
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: Three Tenant Families
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1988); Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English,
For Her Own Good: 150 Years of the Experts' Advice to Women
(Garden City, NY: Anchor Press, 1978); and Michael J. McDonald and John Muldowny,
TVA and the Dispossessed: The Resettlement of Population in the Norris Dam Area
(Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1982). Chapter 15, especially the section on the sounds of war, owes much to Angus Calder,
The People's War: Britain, 1939–45
(New York: Pantheon Books, 1969).

And for the final section of the book, I'm indebted to A. M. Rosenthal, ed.,
The Night the Lights Went Out
(New York: New American Library, 1965); Catherine Rich and Travis Longcore, eds.,
Ecological Consequences of Artificial Night Lighting
(Washington, DC: Island Press, 2006); and the International Dark-Sky Association website,
http://www.darksky.org
.

P
ROLOGUE
: T
HE
E
ARTH AT
N
IGHT AS
S
EEN FROM
S
PACE

[>]
"one could not have put": Anton Chekhov, "Easter Eve," in
The Bishop and Other Stories,
trans. Constance Garnett (New York: Ecco Press, 1985), p. 49.
On a map of the earth: To view the map, see John Weier, "Bright Lights, Big City,"
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/Lights
. See also
http://visibleearth.nasa.gov
(both accessed April 5, 2007).

[>]
"We are almost certain": Gaston Bachelard,
The Psychoanalysis of Fire,
trans. Alan C. Ross (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), p. 55.

P
ART I

[>]
"Of time that passes": Gaston Bachelard,
The Flame of a Candle,
trans. Joni Caldwell (Dallas: Dallas Institute Publications, 1988), p. 69.

C
HAPTER
1: L
ASCAUX
: T
HE
F
IRST
L
AMP

[>]
In the chambers of Lascaux: The names of the chambers of the Lascaux Cave and the figures in them are from Norbert Aujoulat,
Lascaux: Movement, Space, and Time,
trans. Martin Street (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2005), p. 30.

[>]
"The iconography": Ibid., p. 194.
"Achieving full and accurate": Sophie A. de Beaune and Randall White, "Ice Age Lamps,"
Scientific American,
March 1993, p. 112.

[>]
"render to God":
Asser's Life of King Alfred,
trans. L. C. Jane (New York: Cooper Square, 1966), pp. 85–87.

11 "an object like the ghost": Charles Dickens,
Great Expectations
(Boston: Bedford Books, 1996), p. 337.

[>]
"It was said that": Alice Morse Earle,
Home Life in Colonial Days
(Stockbridge, MA: Berkshire House, 1993), p. 34.
"a serious undertaking": Harriet Beecher Stowe,
Poganuc People: Their Lives and Loves
(New York: Fords, Howard & Hulbert, 1878), p. 230.

[>]
"cut very small": Arthur H. Hayward,
Colonial Lighting
(New York: Dover Publications, 1962), pp. 84–85.
"even the best-read people": Marshall B. Davidson, "Early American Lighting,"
Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin,
n.s., 3, no. 1 (Summer 1944): 30.

[>]
"There are several Ways": Jonathan Swift, "Directions to Servants,"
Directions to Servants and Miscellaneous Pieces, 1733–1742,
ed. Herbert Davis (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1959), pp. 14–15.
"stinking tallow": William Shakespeare,
Cymbeline,
in
The Riverside Shakespeare
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974), p. 1529.

[>]
"At the Court": William T. O'Dea,
The Social History of Lighting
(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958), p. 37.
"In the middle": Jean Verdon,
Night in the Middle Ages,
trans. George Holoch (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002), p. 77.
"Their fire sticks": Dr. A. S. Gatschet, quoted in Walter Hough,
Fire as an Agent in Human Culture,
Smithsonian Institution Bulletin, no. 139 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1926), p. 99.

[>]
"a cold dark frosty":
The Tinder Box
(London: William Marsh, 1832), quoted in O'Dea,
The Social History of Lighting,
p. 237.
"About two o'clock": James Boswell, quoted in Molly Harrison,
The Kitchen in History
(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1972), pp. 92–93.
"unfortunate man staying": Jane C. Nylander,
Our Own Snug Fireside: Images of the New England Home, 1760–1860
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994), p. 107.

[>]
"The English dwell": Quoted in A. Roger Ekirch,
At Day's Close: Night in Times Past
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2005), p. 48.
"found it a matter": John Smeaton, quoted in O'Dea,
The Social History of Lighting,
p. 224.
"A French
Book of Trades'":
Ekirch,
At Day's Close,
p. 156.
"From Easter to Saint-Rémi": Verdon,
Night in the Middle Ages,
p. 111.

18 "A servant would have": Cyril of Jerusalem, in Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, eds.,
A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church,
2nd. ser., 7 (New York: Christian Literature, 1894) p. 52.
"And what [is] more": Ibid., pp. 52–53.
"in orderly rows": Gertrude Whiting,
Tools and Toys of Stitchery
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1928), p. 253.

C
HAPTER
2: T
IME OF
D
ARK
S
TREETS

[>]
"The light of the sun": Libanius, quoted in M. Luckiesh,
Artificial Light: Its Influence upon Civilization
(New York: Century, 1920), p. 153.
"Hang-chou boasted": Yi-Fu Tuan, "The City: Its Distance from Nature,"
Geographical Review
68, no. 1 (January 1978): 9.
"No oil lamps lighted": Jérôme Carcopino,
Daily Life in Ancient Rome: The People and the City at the Height of the Empire,
ed. Henry T. Rowell (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1940), p. 47.

[>]
"About half a league": Jean-Jacques Rousseau, quoted in A. Roger Ekirch,
At Day's Close: Night in Times Past
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2005), p. 63.
"as if it were in tyme": Fynes Moryson, quoted ibid., p. 61.
"maintained more than": Ekirch,
At Day's Close,
p. 64.
"At night all houses": Quoted in Wolfgang Schivelbush,
Disenchanted Night: The Industrialization of Light in the Nineteenth Century,
trans. Angela Davies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), p. 81.

[>]
"whose feet in many towns": Jean Verdon,
Night in the Middle Ages,
trans. George Holoch (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002), p. 85.

[>]
"no man [may] walke": Quoted in G. T. Salusbury-Jones,
Street Life in Medieval England
(Sussex, Eng.: Harvester Press, 1975), p. 139.
"Let no one be so bold": Quoted in Verdon,
Night in the Middle Ages,
p. 80.

[>]
"It has been said": Luckiesh,
Artificial Light,
p. 153.

[>]
"On the twenty-sixth day": Quoted in Verdon,
Night in the Middle Ages,
p. 124.
"A man would thincke": Quoted in Ekirch,
At Day's Close,
p. 71.

[>]
"a lamp that
waits":
Gaston Bachelard,
The Flame of a Candle,
trans. Joni Caldwell (Dallas: Dallas Institute Publications, 1988), pp. 71–72.
"On 1 December": Quoted in Schivelbush,
Disenchanted Night,
pp. 90–91.
"the magistrates": Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace,
Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 111.

28 "totally inadequate to dispel": William Sidney,
England and the English in the Eighteenth Century: Chapters in the Social History of the Times,
vol. 1 (London: Ward & Downey, 1892), p. 15.

[>]
"The light, such as it was": Ibid., pp 14–15.
"greasy clodhopping fellows": Ibid., p. 15.
"Another thing; they might": Louis-Sébastien Mercier,
Panorama of Paris,
ed. Jeremy D. Popkin (University Park: Pennsylvania University Press, 1999), p. 43.
"Cautious citizens in Birmingham": Tuan, "The City," p. 10.
"that as the fear": Ibid.

[>]
"in Vienna in 1688": Craig Koslofsky, "Court Culture and Street Lighting in Seventeenth-Century Europe,"
Journal of Urban History
28, no. 6 (September 2002): 760.
"the streets after ten": Mercier,
Panorama of Paris,
p. 132.

[>]
"was an undertaking": Sidney,
England and the English,
p. 15.
"a custom, both in ancient": Leone di Somi,
Dialogues on Stage Affairs,
quoted in Frederick Penzel,
Theatre Lighting Before Electricity
(Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1978), p. 7.

[>]
"Until he himself": William J. Lawrence,
Old Theatre Days and Ways
(New York: Benjamin Bloom, 1968), p. 130.
"These beautiful lights": Johannes Neiner, quoted in Koslofsky,
"Court Culture and Street Lighting," p. 751.
"Night falls": Mercier,
Panorama of Paris,
p. 95.

[>]
"In the old days": Ibid., p. 41.
"I have known fogs": Ibid., pp. 133–34.
"The darkness that spread": Schivelbush,
Disenchanted Night,
p. 106.

[>]
"the clanking of its huge axe": Thomas Carlyle,
The French Revolution: A History
(New York: Modern Library, n.d.), p. 625.
"In the summer of 1789": Schivelbush,
Disenchanted Night,
p. 100.
"Originally, this word": Mercier, quoted ibid.
"the gaunt scarecrows": Charles Dickens,
A Tale of Two Cities
(New York: Signet, 1997), p. 39.
"not infrequently, the hapless": Quoted in Schivelbush,
Disenchanted Night,
pp. 90–91.
"whirled across the Place": Carlyle,
The French Revolution,
p. 164.