Katie Shore

(Image of a Light Bulb from BBC News)

Since the beginning of time, light has been a human necessity. While natural light is nice and all, it wasn’t always available when humans needed it. When the sun went down, the day was over, but new and efficient forms of light fixed this problem. Now, I can study in my well-lit room as late into the night as I want rather than sleeping as I should.

It took a long time to develop the accessible electricity that I use today for my late night studying. NPR’s “Planet Money” podcast titled “The History of Light” goes as far back as four thousand years ago to the time of the Babylonians to analyze the difficulties of creating and using light. Bill Nordhaus, an Economics professor at Yale, conducted his own experiments to emulate how the ancient Babylonians produced light. He determined that to generate a mere ten minutes of light during this time, a person would need to spend an entire day’s worth of wages.

One would expect that as the years went on, innovations would allow people to spend less money on light and get more of it. On the contrary, Nordhaus explains that improvements generally didn’t do much: “From Babylonian times to around 1800, there were – even though there were improvements as best we can tell, they were very modest.”

Creating light was a process involving a great deal of complexity. For example, some people made candles out of beef fat. This process involved raising, feeding, and then killing a cow to extract and melt its fat. Wicks then needed to be dipped in the fat and dried. Only after lots of work would you have some candles that would produce a minimal amount of light. One of the narrators of the podcast tried this technique and spent several hours making candles, which are pictured below.

(Images of Beef Fat Candles from Jacob Goldstein of NPR)

If you didn’t want to make candles out of beef fat, then you had a few other options. Some killed whales for their fat and burned whale oil to generate light. This tactic created about an hour of light for a day’s worth of wages. Likewise, the Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest would catch salmon and turn them into candles. The petrel, an oily seabird, was turned into a candle by putting a wick down its throat and lighting it. Still, there had to be an easier way to get light that didn’t involve killing animals…

Finally, in the 1800s, scientists began experimenting to try to produce better, more efficient forms of light. In 1850, a man named Abraham Gesner developed kerosene, which provided more light and was cheaper than other light sources at the time. It also didn’t require any animals to be killed and produced five hours of light for a day’s worth of wages.

The most significant breakthrough was Edison’s invention of the light bulb and cheaper electricity. Banker J.P. Morgan funded Edison, which allowed him to build a power plant that would illuminate his lightbulbs. In 1882, the plant was completed in Lower Manhattan, and it was able to power part of the area. Edison’s power plant involved a great deal of complexity as well. He had patents to protect his innovative ideas, and investors gave him a lot of money to support his efforts. Ultimately, Edison created a safe, inexpensive, and efficient source of light that was revolutionary at the time.

Now, one day’s worth of wages can purchase 20,000 hours of light. We have sure come a long way from the ten minutes of light a day’s wages could buy in the Babylonian times.

The creation of a new source of light created some unintended consequences. Edison’s power plant burnt a great deal of coal, which caused a lot of pollution. Additionally, this new technology provided humans with opportunities far beyond just light, as the podcast’s host notes: “This one little story, it explains why we are where we are today, why billions of people don’t have to worry about starving today, why we aren’t all subsistence farmers, why we can afford to have artists and massage therapists and plumbers and, yes, radio reporters doing stories about the history of light.” Who would have thought at the time that more accessible lighting solutions would have such a significant impact on humanity? Now, almost everything that we do somehow involves electricity or a source of light.

Today, we have lots and lots of light, and the quest for even better light sources continues. Companies such as John Edmond’s Cree continue to create better, more efficient lighting solutions such as LED light bulbs. From street lights to desk lamps to car headlights, we live in a well-lit world.

The future is bright for humanity, and it’s because of light.