Energy · 1876

Electric arc lighting

Dazzling carbon arcs light boulevards, lighthouses and factories.

Humphry Davy showed the arc around 1809, but dynamos made it practical. Pavel Yablochkov's 1876 'electric candle' lit the Avenue de l'Opera in Paris, and Charles Brush's arc systems lit US city streets from 1879.

See it in the living tree Wikipedia

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 1

Self-excited dynamo 1866

What it led to 1

Electric arc furnace 1900

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

Efficacy of selected lighting devices Latest: 303 lumens per watt (2014) Source: Nordhaus 1996, Do Real-Output and Real-Wage Measures Capture Reality? The History of Lighting Suggests Not, Table 1.3; Semiconductor Today, 26 Mar 2014: Cree breaks 300 lm/W

Price of light in the UK Latest: 2.15 £ (2000) per million lumen-hours (2023) Source: Our World in Data