Disenchanted Night: The Industrialization of Light in the Nineteenth Century [Paperback]

Wolfgang Schivelbusch (Author), Angela Davies (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 20, 1995 | ISBN-10: 0520203542 | ISBN-13: 978-0520203549

This text tells the story of the development of artificial light in the 19th century. The book reveals the ways that the technology of artificial light helped forge modern consciousness. It discusses such topics as the political symbolism of street lighting and the rise of nightlife.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The story of the development of artificial light in the 19th century is not only a history of its technology but a revelation of how that technology helped forge modern consciousness. The range of subjects includes the political symbolism of streetlamps, the rise of nightlife and the shop window, and the importance of the salon in the bourgeois culture. Very Highly Recommended.

Review

Entertaining... provides ground for much speculation -- about the deregulation of utilities, the role of lighting in crime control, the growing attraction of self-sufficient rural life and the social functions of the theater. That is no mean feat for 227 pages. -- New York Times Book Review

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Product Details

• Paperback: 227 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press (December 20, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520203542
• ISBN-13: 978-0520203549
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #59,895 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #21 in Books > Computers & Technology > Business & Culture > Future of Computing

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars illuminating reading, October 18, 2002

By 

curt dilger (phila usa) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Disenchanted Night: The Industrialization of Light in the Nineteenth Century (Paperback)

This rather obscure book shouldn't be; a very meticulous and perceptive history of an important subject, the history of artificial light, Schivelbusch provides excellent research and, significantly, adds unexpected observations along the way, such as the political dimension of artificial light, light as an expression of statist control. Highly recommended.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars From fire light to near sunlight day and night, July 8, 2008

By 

Elmer P. Jennings "Adventurer in history" (Wichita, Kansas USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Disenchanted Night: The Industrialization of Light in the Nineteenth Century (Paperback)

Those books that you missed or wished you had read, good books in great shape hardback or paperback.
The industrialization of light follows the need to see in the dark and dust from the flickering fire and torch to the 21st century.
Mankind lost and gained when he went from burning branches to the 21st century lighting. We needed to see well when we started learning how to put nature to work and create knowledge and put it to work. As a person in his eightyfourth year of life, from lil lamps to inflourescent better lighting was a necesity created by an invention. I remember gas lighting but this book filled me in on the things of this great trip that I did not know and helped me understand the stops along the way.

We lost some family togetherness but we gained a foothold on life.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Disenchanted Night, June 2, 2008

By 

Sam Adams (Minnesota. USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Disenchanted Night: The Industrialization of Light in the Nineteenth Century (Paperback)

The book has five main sections: The Lamp; The Street; Night Life; The Drawing Room; The Stage. As the publisher's blurb says: "[The author] tells the story of the development of artificial light in the nineteenth century. Not simply a history of a technology, [this book] reveals the ways that the technology of artificial illumination helped forge the modern consciousness."

The first main section, The Lamp, discusses the development of the gas lamp and the consequent municipal control over home gas lighting, as well as the new dangers of explosion and gas poisoning. It proceeds to the development of electric lighting and tells how "Edison developed the central electricity station on the model of the gas-works just as seventy years earlier Winsor had conceived a central gas supply along the lines of the water supply." (64)

The second main section, The Street, is initially more about the sociological effects of the increasing illumination of the urban night, and the relation of street lighting to political power. With the advent of electric street lights, the author focuses again on the technological side, for example, the hopes to use arc lighting as an artificial sun to illuminate an entire city from a single lamp.

The third main section, Night Life, is a brief look at the "lighting of festivity" in contrast to the previous section, which concerned the "lighting of order". (137) Night life "derives its own special atmosphere from the light that falls onto the pavements and streets from shops,... cafes and restaurants.... It is advertising light - commercialized festive illumination - in contrast to street light, the lighting of a police order. Commercial light is to police light what bourgeois society is to the state." (142)

The next main section, The Drawing Room, tells us this room, also called the parlor or living room, remained unlit by electric light in homes using electric light in other rooms. Gas light was diffused through lamp shades, just as sunlight was diffused through muslin window curtains. Later, when electric light entered the drawing room, lamp shades became darker or multi-colored in the manner, for example, of Tiffany, and window curtains became heavier, more opaque, to more severely filter sunlight, and at night to block the entrance of bright lighting from the street.

The final main section, The Stage, tells us there were difficulties getting stage lighting to appear natural. The closer foot light lit brighter than the more distant side lights, giving, as one reviewer wrote, the appearance of light "coming straight from Hell." Being lit from below, the actors looked unnatural, their faces "grotesque masks". Yet it was only within the light of the foot lights that subtle facial expressions could be discerned. Only within this band of light at the front of the stage were the actors most clearly seen. The introduction of electric light removed these difficulties, but this new brighter lighting washed away the illusions previously created by scenery designed to work under dimmer and less pervasive illumination. Color, too, was perceived differently under electric light.