Brilliant (37 page)

35 "the order of nature": Philip Balthasar Sinold, quoted in Koslofsky, "Court Culture and Street Lighting," p. 746.
"now [opened] hardly": Friedrich Justin Bertuch, quoted in Koslofsky, "Court Culture and Street Lighting," p. 744.

[>]
"The city lives": Richard Eder, "New York," in "Cities in Winter,"
Saturday Review,
January 8, 1977, p. 25.
"not a small New York": Elizabeth Hardwick, "Boston," in
A View of My Own: Essays in Literature and Society
(London: William Heinemann, 1964), p. 151.

C
HAPTER
3: L
ANTERNS AT
S
EA

[>]
"more scarce than": Herman Melville,
Moby Dick
(New York: Penguin Books, 1992), p. 466.
"The oil is hissing": J. Ross Browne, quoted in Richard Ellis,
Men and Whales
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991), p. 198.

[>]
"When the flesh": From Arrian's description of the conquests of Alexander the Great, quoted ibid., p. 33.

[>]
"When they come within": Levi Whitman, quoted in James Deetz and Patricia Scott Deetz,
The Times of Their Lives: Life, Love, and Death in Plymouth Colony
(New York: Anchor Books, 2001), p. 248.
"The respiratory canal": William Davis,
Nimrod of the Sea,
quoted in Alexander Starbuck,
History of the American Whale Fishery
(Secaucus, NJ: Castle Books, 1989), p. 157.
"carpet a room": Ibid., p. 156.

[>]
"The lips and throat": Ibid., p. 157.
"subsists wholly on mist":
The King's Mirror,
trans. Laurence Marcellus Larson (New York: American-Scandinavian Foundation, 1917), p. 123.
"that wondrous Venetian blind": Melville,
Moby Dick,
p. 297.
"It is as if": Ibid., p. 461.

[>]
"the unmelted skin": Ellis,
Men and Whales,
p. 198.
"like the left wing": Melville,
Moby Dick,
p. 462.

[>]
"'Bible leaves!'": Ibid., p. 460.
"There they lay": Ibid., p. 466.

[>]
"a new kind of Candles":
The Papers of Benjamin Franklin,
quoted in Richard C. Kugler,
The Whale Oil Trade, 1750–1775
(New Bedford, MA: Old Dartmouth Historical Society, 1980), p. 13n. 44 "In the great Sperm Whale": Melville,
Moby Dick,
p. 379.

46 "whether Leviathan": Ibid., p. 501.

[>]
"They think that at best": Ibid., pp. 118–19.

[>]
"The only danger": Pliny the Elder,
The Natural History of Pliny,
trans. John Bostock and H. T. Riley, vol. 6 (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1858) p. 339.

[>]
"was to drive": D. Alan Stevenson,
The World's Lighthouses Before 1820
(London: Oxford University Press, 1959), p. xxiv.
"Many coastal villages": Bella Bathurst,
The Lighthouse Stevensons: The Extraordinary Story of the Building of the Scottish Lighthouses by the Ancestors of Robert Louis Stevenson
(New York: HarperCollins, 1999), p. 26.
"The rust-colored gneiss": Ibid., p. 54.

[>]
"At midsummer the party": Stevenson,
The World's Lighthouses,
p. 115.

[>]
"Quickly the fire": Ibid., p. 121.
"Fenders fixed": Ibid., p. 124.

[>]
"very strong and bright": John Smeaton, quoted ibid., pp. 125–26.

[>]
"So long as the air": Samuel Williams, quoted in
Harvard Case Histories in Experimental Science,
ed. James Bryant Conant, case 2,
The Overthrow of the Phlogiston Theory: The Chemical Revolution of 1775–1789
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964), p. 15.
"As soon as the Air": Ibid., pp. 15–16.

[>]
"very white": Quoted in Brian Bowers,
Lengthening the Day: A History of Lighting Technology
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 28. "as the light emitted": A.F.M. Willich,
The Domestic Encyclopaedia, or A Dictionary of Facts, and Useful Knowledge,
vol. 3 (London: B. McMillan, 1802), s.v. "lamp,"
http://chestofbooks.com/reference/The-Domestic-Encyclopaedia-Vol3/Lamp.html
(accessed June 29, 2009).

[>]
"Being 'the thing'": Marshall B. Davidson, "Early American Lighting,"
Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin,
n.s., 3, no. 1 (Summer 1944): 37.
"The modest versions": Ibid.
"the single most powerful": Stevenson,
The World's Lighthouses,
p. xix.

[>]
"Every night they go": Henry Beston,
The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod
(New York: Henry Holt, 1992), p. 128.

57 "There has just been": Ibid., pp. 116–17, 121.

C
HAPTER
4: G
ASLIGHT

[>]
"It seldom needs": Thomas Cooper,
Some Information Concerning Gas Lights
(Philadelphia: John Conrad, 1816), p. 23.
"The inflammable gas": Philippe Lebon, quoted in Wolfgang Schivelbush,
Disenchanted Night: The Industrialization of Light in the Nineteenth Century,
trans. Angela Davies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), p. 23.

[>]
"All factories": M. E. Falkus, "The Early Development of the British Gas Industry, 1790–1815,"
Economic History Review,
n.s., 35, no. 2 (May 1982): 219.

[>]
"It was estimated": Ibid., p. 223.
"Suppose it were required": Cooper,
Some Information Concerning Gas Lights,
p. 12.

[>]
"The burners were simply": William T. O'Dea,
The Social History of Lighting
(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958), p. 115.
"Clean and orderly": Quoted in Francis D. Klingender,
Art and the Industrial Revolution
(London: Noel Carrington, 1947), p. 111.

[>]
"This spire increases": John Buddle, quoted in'T. S. Ashton and Joseph Sykes,
The Coal Industry of the Eighteenth Century
(New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1967), p. 44n.
"Clad from head to foot": Ibid., pp. 44–45.

[>]
"Everything in the way": Quoted ibid., p. 42n.
"were about three hundred": Quoted ibid., p. 49n.

[>]
"work was continued": T. E. Forster, "Historical Notes on Wallsend Colliery,"
Transactions of the Institution of Mining Engineers
15 (1897–1898),
http://www.dmm-gallery.org.uk/transime/u15f-01.htm
(accessed February 1, 2009).
"sometimes tried to carry on": Ashton and Sykes,
The Coal Industry,
p. 51.

[>]
"had provided the miner": Ibid., p. 53.
"if it were intended": Sir Humphry Davy, quoted in Samuel Clegg Jr.,
Practical Treatise on the Manufacture and Distribution of Coal-Gas
(London: John Weale, 1841), p. 17.
"Winsor was not": Schivelbush,
Disenchanted Night,
pp. 26–27.

67 "a brightness clear": Quoted in Clegg,
Practical Treatise,
pp. 20–21.
"I foresee in this": Charles Dickens,
The Lamplighter: A Farce
(London: Printed from a Manuscript in the Forster Collection at the South Kensington Museum, 1879), p. 10.

[>]
"It was strangely believed": Clegg,
Practical Treatise,
p. 17.

[>]
"Wherever a gas-factory": Quoted in Lynda Nead,
Victorian Babylon: People, Streets and Images in Nineteenth-Century London
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 94.
"Mr. Arabin, deposed": Cooper,
Some Information Concerning Gas Lights,
p. 131.

[>]
"When the effluvia": Ibid., p. 133.
"
Thomas Edgely
is": Ibid., pp. 134–35.
"at present it is": Quoted in Schivelbush,
Disenchanted Night,
p. 35.

[>]
"In 1821 no town": Steven J. Goldfarb, "A Regency Gas Burner,"
Technology and Culture
12, no. 3 (July 1971): 476.
"Paris was illuminated": Quoted in Walter Benjamin,
The Arcades Project,
trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 565.
"The work of Prometheus": Robert Louis Stevenson, "A Plea for Gas Lamps," in
Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers
(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1893), p. 274.

[>]
"Paris will be": Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, letter 550, in
The Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh,
vol. 3 (Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society, 1959), p. 75.
"The whole of Paris": Andreas Bluhm and Louise Lippincott,
Light! The Industrial Age, 1750–1900
(New York: Thames & Hudson, 2001), p. 182.

[>]
"During the day": Karl Gutzkow, quoted in Benjamin,
The Arcades Project,
p. 537.

[>]
"The new mode of illumination": Frederick Penzel,
Theatre Lighting Before Electricity
(Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1978), p. 54.
"a
kaleidoscope":
Charles Baudelaire, quoted in Walter Benjamin, "On Some Motifs in Baudelaire," in
Illuminations: Essays and Reflections,
ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken Books, 1969), p. 175.
"As the darkness came on": Edgar Allan Poe, "The Man of the Crowd," in
The Unabridged Edgar Allan Poe
(Philadelphia: Running Press, 1983), p. 648.

75 "As the night deepened": Ibid., p. 650.

[>]
"Some rushed about": "Bereft of Light: Terrific Explosion at the Metropolitan Gas Works,"
New York Times,
December 24, 1871, p. 5.

C
HAPTER
5: T
OWARD A
M
ORE
P
ERFECT
F
LAME

[>]
"A candle, you know": Michael Faraday,
The Chemical History of a Candle
(Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2002), p. 13.

[>]
"brilliantly white, inodorous": Campbell Morfit,
A Treatise on Chemistry Applied to the Manufacture of Soap and Candles
(Philadelphia: Parry & McMillan, 1856), p. 543.
"mortal man should feed": Herman Melville,
Moby Dick
(New York: Penguin Books, 1992), p. 325.

[>]
"any common use": "Camphene and Burning Fluid,"
New York Times,
November 28, 1854, p. 4.
"a burning fluid lamp": Jane Nylander, "Two Brass Lamps...,"
Historic New England Magazine,
Winter/Spring 2003,
http://www.historicnewengland.org/nehm/2003winterspringpage04.htm
(accessed February 12, 2009).

[>]
"If possible avoid": Quoted in Charles Panati,
Panati's Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things
(New York: Harper & Row, 1989), p. 109. "The chemical match": Quoted in Walter Benjamin,
The Arcades Project,
trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 568.

[>]
"We dreamed of the lamp": Gaston Bachelard,
The Flame of a Candle,
trans. Joni Caldwell (Dallas: Dallas Institute Publications, 1988), p. 66.

[>]
"could supply a family's": Daniel Yergin,
The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), p. 34.
"the kind of oil": William T. O'Dea,
The Social History of Lighting
(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958), pp. 55–56.
"The production of petroleum":
Titusville Morning Herald,
quoted in Harold F. Williamson and Arnold R. Daum,
The American Petroleum Industry: The Age of Illumination, 1859–1899
(Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1959), p. 371.

85 "The country has been flooded": Quoted in Kathleen Grier,
The Popular Illuminator: Domestic Lighting in the Kerosene Era, 1860–1900
(Rochester, NY: Strong Museum, 1985), p. 10.
"Good oil poured": Catharine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe,
The American Woman's Home
(1869; repr., Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2004), p. 190.

[>]
"Wed., September 1":
Willimantic Chronicle,
quoted in "The Dangers of Kerosene Lamps,"
http://www.thelampworks.com/lw_lamp_accidents.htm
(accessed June 3, 2009).

[>]
"There is as much wit":
The Woman's Book,
vol. 2 (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1894), quoted in Grier,
The Popular Illuminator,
pp. 7–8.

[>]
"By keeping their independent": Wolfgang Schivelbush,
Disenchanted Night: The Industrialization of Light in the Nineteenth Century,
trans. Angela Davies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), p. 162.
"I boldly declare": Quoted in Benjamin,
The Arcades Project,
p. 562.

[>]
"It seems there are": Bachelard,
The Flame of a Candle,
p. 4.

P
ART
II

[>]
"You turn the thumbscrew":
New York Times,
September 5, 1882, p. 8.

C
HAPTER
6: L
IFE
E
LECTRIC

[>]
"little click": Gaston Bachelard,
The Flame of a Candle,
trans. Joni Caldwell (Dallas: Dallas Institute Publications, 1988), p. 64.
"it seemed to live": Park Benjamin,
The Age of Electricity from Amber-Soul to Telephone
(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1888), pp. 2–3.

[>]
"He suspended a long": Quoted ibid., p. 11.

[>]
"When a nail": Ewald von Kleist, quoted ibid., p. 15.

[>]
"to move electricity": Philip Dray,
Stealing God's Thunder: Benjamin Franklin's Lightning Rod and the Invention of America
(New York: Random House, 2005), p. 49.
"I advise you": Quoted in Jill Jonnes,
Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World
(New York: Random House, 2004), p. 23.
"a vast country": Albrecht von Haller, quoted in Dray,
Stealing God's Thunder,
p. 46.

98 "chagrined a little": Benjamin Franklin, "The Electrical Writings of Benjamin Franklin and Friends," collected by Robert A. Morse, 2004, Wright Center for Innovation in Science Teaching, Tufts University, Medford, MA, p. 24 (pdf p. 35),
http://www.tufts.edu/as/wright_center/personal_pages/bob_m/franklin_electricity_screen.pdf
(accessed June 29, 2009).
"I have lately made": Ibid., p. 58 (pdf p. 69).
"was the first to discover": Dray,
Stealing God's Thunder,
pp. 54–55.