The Victory of Light

Before the electric light, the nighttime was… well, when you slept. Artificial light, be it a lamp fueled by whale oil or some thick candles, was dangerous, unpleasant and dim.

And things were dark after the sun fell. Forget the movies you’ve seen, because they had to ensure the audience could see things. With no street lights, no bright city lights bouncing off of the clouds, night time could be pitch black. Gangs could run rampant, ranging from gangs of robbers to homicidal groups that helped contribute to the utterly atrocious murder rates of the world before we had more than candles to banish the night away.

Even the rise of gas lighting didn’t fully fix this, because gas lights required a huge dedicated infrastructure, and of course had an unpleasant tendency to poison you or burn your house down when something went wrong.

So for much of the world, it was get up with the sun, and then go down with the sun. If you got up in the night, you used candles, or just got used to walking around blindly. In fact, in some regions, people would push the furniture to the walls, so that they wouldn’t fall over them.

And then the lightbulb came along. We won’t go through all the stories of how it was devised. Let’s just focus on this fact.

You finally have a device, which you can turn on and off with a flick of a switch, that won’t burn your home down, won’t poison you with gas, and won’t require you to go broke buying candles or whale oil.

Your business no longer has to worry about that.  That little 60-watt bulb is brighter than a hundred candles—and doesn’t drip wax, or risk setting your home’s bone-dry timber on fire. And so you can stay open after dark. Long after dark.

And your employees can keep working after dark.

Not just that. By the late 19th can early 20th century, more and more cities had “white ways’ or streets that were illuminated by bright electrical lights.

Suddenly, it was a lot harder to hide if you were up to no good. Combined with police, it was a lot easier for the state to keep the streets safe from the kind of crime that had once flourished in the darkness.

Suddenly, having electrical lighting was something that divided the haves from the have nots.

For all these reasons, the expansion of electrical grids and availability of lighting exploded across the world. In the United States, over 70% of the nation was electrified, with the Rural Electric Administration working from the mid-1930s on to bring power to rural areas. The same happened in most other developed nations, and through the twentieth century, developing a national power grid was a goal for every developing nation in the world.

But why is this something most people overlook? I can hear you asking that question. Schools talk about it, history books talk about it…

The answer is this: when have you last seen the dark as anything other than an inconvenience? When did the question of  whether it is night or day influence your decision to go see a movie, go out and eat, or hell, read a book?

For most of us, unless we have a personal preference, it doesn’t. Without really noticing it, you, sitting and reading this book late at night, have conquered the tyrant that ruled everyone from the Caesars to the Kings of England.

And if you’re sitting reading this during your night shift at a local supermarket… well, unfortunately, your bosses have also conquered the night, and have no problem making you work at night.

But beyond that, think of how many of us interact at just about any time we please? Stay up late, call your friends, have people over…

Nobody worried about the fact that the sun went down, save for very rare events.

Now flip side—what happens when the power goes off?Even if you have flashlights, most people get nervous. Everything’s dark. You can’t just flip a switch and bring back the light. It’s strange, it’s unusual it’s…

The kind of world most of humanity took for granted. A world where the sun, not our own decisions, determines whether or not there will be light.

So when you’re thinking about this incredible power, the power most people don’t even consciously consider… get a pad of paper and a tablet, and list down say, the first ten things that would be hard or impossible to do if you didn’t have the power to call light when you want it.

You might be surprised at how important that is.