Let there be light or the Tale of the Electricity Fairy

[playmovictorian]

Let there be Light or the Tale of the Electricity Fairy

There is excitement in the air today in Regent St as the latest gossip is that the Electricity Fairy is coming to the Mansion ! But what exactly is the Electricity Fairy ? All the neighbours are gathering around the Mansion to watch a miracle in the making ! Goodbye candles and welcome 20th century ! Even the cat is puzzled and today, he is not the only one !

Karim

[Bill Blackhurst]

As always, great story & attention to details, Karim ! Well done !

[Gepetto]

Great setup with the klickies all helping to 'lighten' the load! The attention to detail is exemplary! 

[Wolf Knight]

Love it!!! Simply love it!!!!  the story is so well presented Karim and these lighting equipment are fantastic!!! They go so well with the mansion!!! Are they for regular dollhouses?
I am sure playmo1989 will want to ask a lot of questions....

[flatcat]

Haven't we already seen this

[playmovictorian]

Let There be Light !

From Beeswax Candles to the Electricity Fairy !

CANDLES

Three types of candle were commonly used at the start of the period; tallow, spermaceti and beeswax. Tallow candles made from animal fat in moulds were the cheapest but they burnt with a smoky flame which produced progressively less and less light - and they stank. Spermaceti wax, made from whale oil, was harder than either beeswax or tallow and was least likely to soften in hot weather. Improvements in the design of the wicks shortly before the Victorian period commenced had eliminated guttering, and the plaited wicks introduced in the 1820s curled out of the flame as they burnt, eliminating the need for constant trimming which plagued earlier candles. By the end of the century the modern paraffin wax candle was the most commonly used, being cheap, odourless and reliable.

Chandeliers, sconces and candelabra varied from their Georgian predecessors in style only, although shades became popular in the taste for sumptuous decoration and richness in the late 19th century. The most significant technological improvements affected various lamps fitted with candles, reflectors and lenses, often with sophisticated spring-loaded mechanisms for ensuring that the flame remained at the same height relative to the lens or shade, forcing the candle to rise as it burnt.

Candlelight was used for most ordinary activities throughout the Victorian period, from dining and playing cards to cooking, particularly in areas where there was no gas, until finally eclipsed by electric light. Photographs of interiors taken by the architectural photographer H Bedford Lemere between 1890 and 1910 (reproduced in The Opulent Eye - see Recommended Reading) show that in the 1890s fashionable hotels and homes were still being lit by candlelight and oil lamps. In the drawing rooms and dining rooms of the wealthy, candelabra were often positioned on the mantlepiece in front of a pier glass mirror, sconces were also common and on the tables there were oil lamps, candlesticks and candelabra, often in addition to gasoliers above. In most cases the candles had shades, some with frills and tassels, others plain, perhaps made of paper. In the photographs taken in the early 20th century, many of the candle fittings seen were empty. The frills and tassels had gone, and the interiors were cool and uncluttered by comparison. Many of the electric light fittings shown were converted chandeliers and sconces with light bulbs protruding from imitation candles, illustrating a nostalgia for the candle which remains as strong today.

OIL LAMPS

Oil had been burnt in lamps at least since the Palaeolithic age, and the cheapest light fittings used in Victorian homes had changed little since then, with a simple wick protruding from a small container of whale oil or vegetable oil. However, much brighter and more sophisticated lamps had emerged late in the 18th century, the most important being the Argand oil lamp. This lamp had a broad flat wick held between two metal cylinders to form a circular wick, with air drawn through it and around it. This in itself was a revolutionary idea, but its inventor, Aimé Argand also discovered that by placing a tube or 'chimney' over the flame, the hot gases from the flame rose rapidly creating a draught and drawing air in from below. Fanned by a draught from both inside and outside the circular wick, the poor spluttering flame of early lamps was transformed into a bright, efficient light source.

The one disadvantage for the Argand oil lamp and its many imitators in the early Victorian period was that the best oil then available, colza, was so thick and viscous that it had to be fed to the wick either by gravity from a reservoir above, or pumped up from below. Most colza oil lamps have a reservoir often shaped like a classical urn to one side which in some fittings obstructed the light. The Sinumbra lamp got around the problem by having a circular reservoir around the base of the glass light shade.

One of the most significant improvements of the Victorian period was the introduction of paraffin. Patented in 1850, the price of the new fuel fell dramatically following the discovery of oil in Pennsylvania, USA. As paraffin was much lighter than colza the reservoir could be placed below the flame, enabling many new designs of light fittings. One of the most successful paraffin lamps was the Duplex burner introduced in 1865 which had two wicks side by side and, like the Argand lamp, a clear glass chimney with air drawn from below. Most lamps also had a larger shade around the chimney often of opaque glass to diffuse the light. The shades or diffusers provided an opportunity for decoration, and a variety of shapes, colours and patterns were used.

A type of paraffin lamp with a Duplex burner which was common in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The simple pulley arrangement enabled the lamp to be pulled down low over a table to provide a bright pool of light, or raised to illuminate the whole room.
The amount of light which can be produced by a wick is limited by the surface area of the wick and the amount of fuel and air able to reach it. As fuel burns at the tip of the wick only. The gas mantle, on the other hand, provides a much larger three-dimensional surface, and is far more effective as a result. Invented by Carl Aur von Wesbach in 1885, the incandescent mantle was the last major breakthrough in oil and gas lighting of the period, before both succumbed to electric lighting. The mantle consists of a skirt of silk or cotton impregnated with a non-inflammable mixture (thorium and cerium), suspended over a fierce flame. When first ignited, the cotton burns away leaving fine, brittle filaments of non-combustible material in its place which glow white hot or 'incandescent'. The mantle works best with either gas or a fine mist of paraffin produced by a pressurised reservoir which is still widely used in camping lamps today, producing a bright, warm light to rival an electric bulb

.

GAS

Gas lighting of buildings and streets began early in the 19th century, with most streets in London lit by gas as early as 1816. But for the first 50 years it was generally distrusted and few homes were lit. After gas fittings were introduced in the new Houses of Parliament in 1859 the tide turned. Fasionable town houses constructed in the 1860s often had a central pendant gas light (that is to say a gas light attached to the ceiling) in each of the principal rooms with a ventilation grille above, cunningly disguised in the deep recesses of the ceiling rose. Gas 'wall brackets' were used in place of the sconce, and some staircases were lit by newel lights attached to the newel post. The largest pendant fittings had several burners and were known as gasoliers.

Before the advent of the incandescent mantle, gas lighting relied on a simple open flame. By the mid 19th century the most common burners produced fan-shaped flames like the Batswing and Fish Tail burners. The Argand burner, which was successfully adapted for gas, was the principal exception with its circular flame.

All these gas light fittings and the early incandescent mantles had to point upwards directing the light towards the ceiling and away from where the light was needed most, and it was not until 1897 that the gas mantle was adapted to burn downwards - a useful event to remember when dating gas fittings.

Simple gas lights incorporated a plain brass, copper or iron gas supply tube with a tap for switching the gas on and off, terminating in a burner shielded from direct view by a shade or globe to diffuse the light. Some burners such as the Argand also incorporated a glass tube or chimney, and around which could be placed a larger shade of glass or silk. Pendant lights could consist of little more than a vertical rod turned at right angles at the end to support the up-turned burner, but they were rarely that simple in the Victorian period. Every element of the gas light offered an opportunity for embellishment. Early pendant fittings often incorporated two or more arms forming a loop, gracefully curving down around the glass lamp shade, with the lamp cradled below. In another design scrolling arms radiated from a central baluster, a design echoed by the scrolling arms of the wall brackets.

The shades provided another opportunity for embellishment. Most glass shades were translucent, either frosted or coloured and were often extremely ornate, with cut glass decoration or etched patterns. The most elaborate shapes appeared at the end of the 19th century when designs reached their most opulent in the Louis XV revival. As well as ornate silk shades on lamps with chimneys, a variety of other more delicate devices were introduced at different times, such as shades of glass beads.

By 1890 main stream taste had begun to change dramatically. Although William Morris, the father of the Arts and Crafts Movement, had established Morris and Co almost 40 years earlier, it was the second generation of craftsmen who started to manufacture products on a larger scale, often adopting the industrial processes reviled by Morris. One of the greatest and most prolific designers of the new style was W A S Benson who, with the encouragement of William Morris, had set up his own workshop making light fittings and other metalwork. His fittings, like those of many of his contemporaries, were mass-produced, selling through Liberty's in London in particular.

The Arts and Crafts style swept out the clutter from the Victorian interior, leaving them lighter and brighter in every sense. Richly decorated surfaces were replaced by plain ones relying on the warmth of natural materials and simple craftsmanship for their interest. Those elements like the fireplaces and light fittings which remained as richly ornamented as ever before took on a new importance, focussing attention. Often the decoration of fittings can be described as 'Art Nouveau' for their graceful, flowing lines and lack of any clear historical influence, but revivalism remained common, and most homes at the turn of the 19th century borrowed heavily from the Tudor and Elizabethan periods in particular.

Karim

[playmovictorian]

The Electricity Fairy

An epic adventure from Benjamin Franklin to Thomas Edison

Benjamin Franklin 

Franklin was an American writer, publisher, scientist and diplomat, who helped to draw up the famous Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution. In 1752 Franklin proved that lightning and the spark from amber were one and the same thing. The story of this famous milestone is a familiar one, in which Franklin fastened an iron spike to a silken kite, which he flew during a thunderstorm, while holding the end of the kite string by an iron key. When lightening flashed, a tiny spark jumped from the key to his wrist. The experiment proved Franklin's theory, but was extremely dangerous - He could easily have been killed.

Galvani and Volta

In 1786, Luigi Galvani, an Italian professor of medicine, found that when the leg of a dead frog was touched by a metal knife, the leg twitched violently. Galvani thought that the muscles of the frog must contain electricity. By 1792 another Italian scientist, Alessandro Volta, disagreed: he realised that the main factors in Galvani's discovery were the two different metals - the steel knife and the tin plate - apon which the frog was lying. Volta showed that when moisture comes between two different metals, electricity is created. This led him to invent the first electric battery, the voltaic pile, which he made from thin sheets of copper and zinc separated by moist pasteboard.

In this way, a new kind of electricity was discovered, electricity that flowed steadily like a current of water instead of discharging itself in a single spark or shock. Volta showed that electricity could be made to travel from one place to another by wire, thereby making an important contribution to the science of electricity. The unit of electrical potential, the Volt, is named after Volta.

Michael Faraday 

The credit for generating electric current on a practical scale goes to the famous English scientist, Michael Faraday. Faraday was greatly interested in the invention of the electromagnet, but his brilliant mind took earlier experiments still further. If electricity could produce magnetism, why couldn't magnetism produce electricity.

In 1831, Faraday found the solution. Electricity could be produced through magnetism by motion. He discovered that when a magnet was moved inside a coil of copper wire, a tiny electric current flows through the wire. Of course, by today's standards, Faraday's electric dynamo or electric generator was crude, and provided only a small electric current be he discovered the first method of generating electricity by means of motion in a magnetic field.

Thomas Edison and Joseph Swan

Nearly 40 years went by before a really practical DC (Direct Current) generator was built by Thomas Edison in America. Edison's many inventions included the phonograph and an improved printing telegraph. In 1878 Joseph Swan, a British scientist, invented the incandescent filament lamp and within twelve months Edison made a similar discovery in America.

Swan and Edison later set up a joint company to produce the first practical filament lamp. Prior to this, electric lighting had been my crude arc lamps.

Edison used his DC generator to provide electricity to light his laboratory and later to illuminate the first New York street to be lit by electric lamps, in September 1882. Edison's successes were not without controversy, however - although he was convinced of the merits of DC for generating electricity, other scientists in Europe and America recognised that DC brought major disadvantages.

George Westinghouse and Nikola Tesla

Westinghouse was a famous American inventor and industrialist who purchased and developed Nikola Tesla's patented motor for generating alternating current. The work of Westinghouse, Tesla and others gradually persuaded American society that the future lay with AC rather than DC (Adoption of AC generation enabled the transmission of large blocks of electrical, power using higher voltages via transformers, which would have been impossible otherwise). Today the unit of measurement for magnetic fields commemorates Tesla's name.

James Watt

When Edison's generator was coupled with Watt's steam engine, large scale electricity generation became a practical proposition. James Watt, the Scottish inventor of the steam condensing engine, was born in 1736. His improvements to steam engines were patented over a period of 15 years, starting in 1769 and his name was given to the electric unit of power, the Watt.

Watt's engines used the reciprocating piston, however, today's thermal power stations use steam turbines, following the Rankine cycle, worked out by another famous Scottish engineer, William J.M Rankine, in 1859.

Andre Ampere

Andre Marie Ampere, a French mathematician who devoted himself to the study of electricity and magnetism, was the first to explain the electro-dynamic theory. A permanent memorial to Ampere is the use of his name for the unit of electric current.

George Simon Ohm

George Simon Ohm, a German mathematician and physicist, was a college teacher in Cologne when in 1827 he published, "The galvanic Circuit Investigated Mathematically". His theories were coldly received by German scientists but his research was recognised in Britain and he was awarded the Copley Medal in 1841. His name has been given to the unit of electrical resistance.

Lighting in the Victorian Home

During the 63 years of Queen Victoria's reign, from 1837 to 1901, life in ordinary houses was transformed by a succession of technological developments which we now take for granted: flushing toilets, plumbed-in baths and showers, regular postal deliveries and light fittings capable of illuminating whole rooms at a time.

At the start of the Victorian period most houses were lit by candles and oil lamps. Interior fittings included chandeliers (suspended from the ceiling) and sconces (fixed to the wall). However these were mainly used on special occasions, and most ordinary events after sunset took place using portable light sources such as candlesticks, candelabra (bracketed candlesticks) and oil lamps, and by the light of the fire. By the end of the period gas lighting was common in urban homes and electricity was being introduced in many.

Chicago World's Fair - Universal Expostion 1893 or the Triumph of the Electricity Fairy

Alternative Power Plant ( Nicola Testa ) - Chicago World's Fair 1893

At day at the Chicago World's Fair 1893

So the next time you switch on the light, remember that it is all thanks to the Electricity Fairy or shall I say Fairies !

Karim

[Bill Blackhurst]

Thank you for the history of this most often taken advantage of luxury, Karim !
You don't realize how dependant you are on electricity & light until you're sitting in a dark room feeling cold or hot with no TV, computer, oven, etc., listening to a battery operated radio, worrying about the food in the fridge thawing !

[Gustavo]

Amazing! ... I imagine the possibilities for lighting work it opens!

Too bad I'm in the stone age here, but, well ...

(Actually I'm not in the stone age ... I only don't go beyond 1815, I think )

Try to make some night pictures with no lights outside the house, and only the inside ones on ... It'll possibly be very interesting

Oh, and I love the street ground you made ... Simple & very effective!

Thanks for sharing with us such great material and work,
I'm delighted!

Gus

[playmo1989]

where can i buy simural lighting for my playmo karim?? from where did you bought them??