History of the street lamp
In 1417, the mayor of London, Henry Barton, ordered that lanterns be hung out on winter evenings to dispel the impenetrable darkness in the British capital. After some time, the French took up his initiative. At the beginning of the 16th century, the inhabitants of Paris were obliged to keep lamps near the windows that face the street. Under Louis XIV, the French capital was filled with the lights of numerous lanterns. The "Sun King" issued a special decree on street lighting in 1667. According to legend, it was thanks to this decree that the reign of Louis was called brilliant.
The first street lamps gave relatively little light, since they used ordinary candles and oil. The use of kerosene made it possible to significantly increase the brightness of lighting, however, the real revolution of street light happened only at the beginning of the 19th century, when gas lamps appeared. Their inventor - the Englishman William Murdoch - was initially ridiculed. Walter Scott wrote to one of his friends that some madman was proposing to light London with smoke. Despite such remarks, Murdoch successfully demonstrated the benefits of gas lighting. In 1807, lanterns of a new design were installed on Pall Mall and soon conquered all European capitals.
Petersburg became the first city in Russia where street lamps appeared. On December 4, 1706, on the day of the celebration of the victory over the Swedes, at the direction of Peter I, street lamps were hung on the facades of the streets facing the Peter and Paul Fortress. The tsar and the townspeople liked the innovation, the lanterns began to be lit for all the big holidays, and thus the beginning of street lighting in St. Petersburg was laid. In 1718, Tsar Peter I issued a decree on “illuminating the streets of the city of St. Petersburg” (the decree on lighting the capital city was signed by Empress Anna Ioannovna only in 1730). The design of the first outdoor oil lantern was designed by Jean Baptiste Leblon, an architect and "a skillful technician of many different arts, of great importance in France." In the autumn of 1720, 4 striped beauties made at the Yamburg glass factory were exhibited on the Neva embankment near the Petrovsky Winter Palace. Glazed lamps were fastened on metal rods on wooden poles with white and blue stripes. Hemp oil burned in them. So we got regular street lighting.
In 1723, thanks to the efforts of Chief of Police Anton Divier, 595 lanterns were lit on the most eminent streets of the city. This light economy was served by 64 lamplighters. The approach to business was scientific. Lanterns were lit from August to April, focusing on the "tables of dark hours" that were sent from the Academy.
The historian of St. Petersburg I.G.Georgi describes this street lighting as follows: “For this, there are wooden poles painted with blue and white paint along the streets, each of which supports a spherical lantern on an iron rod, lowered on a block for cleaning and pouring oil ...”
Petersburg was the first city in Russia and one of the few in Europe where regular street lighting appeared just twenty years after its foundation. Oil lanterns proved to be tenacious - they burned in the city every day for 130 years. Frankly speaking, there was little light from them. In addition, they strove to splash passers-by with hot drops of oil. "Further, for God's sake, further from the lantern!" - we read in Gogol's story Nevsky Prospekt, - “and as soon as possible, pass by as soon as possible. It’s still happiness if you get off with the fact that he will flood your smart frock coat with smelly oil.
Illumination of the northern capital was a profitable business, and the merchants were willing to do it. They received a bonus for each burning lantern and therefore the number of lanterns in the city began to increase. So, by 1794, there were already 3,400 lanterns in the city, much more than in any European capital. Moreover, the lanterns in St. Petersburg (in the design of which such famous architects as Rastrelli, Felten, Montferrand took part) were considered the most beautiful in the world.
The lighting was not perfect. At all times there have been complaints about the quality of street lighting. The lanterns shine dimly, sometimes they do not burn at all, they are extinguished ahead of time. There was even an opinion that lamplighters save themselves oil for porridge.
For decades, oil has been burned in lanterns. Entrepreneurs understood the profitability of lighting and began to look for new ways to generate income. From Ser. 18th century Kerosene was used in lanterns. In 1770, the first lantern team of 100 people was created. (recruits), in 1808 she was assigned to the police. In 1819 on the Aptekarsky island. gas lamps appeared, and in 1835 the St. Petersburg Society for Gas Lighting was established. Alcohol lamps appeared in 1849. The city was divided among various companies. Of course, it would be reasonable, for example, to replace kerosene lighting with gas lighting everywhere. But this was not profitable for oil companies, and the outskirts of the city continued to be illuminated with kerosene, since it was not profitable for the authorities to spend big money on gas. But for a long time in the evenings, lamplighters with ladders over their shoulders loomed on the city streets, hastily running from lamp to lamp.
A textbook on arithmetic survived more than one edition, where the task was given: “A lamplighter lights lanterns on a city street, running from one panel to another. The length of the street is a verst three hundred fathoms, the width is twenty fathoms, the distance between adjacent lamps is forty fathoms, the speed of the lamplighter is twenty fathoms per minute. The question is, how long will it take him to complete his work? (Answer: 64 lanterns located on this street, the lamplighter will light in 88 minutes.)
But then came the summer of 1873. An emergency announcement was made in a number of metropolitan newspapers that "On July 11, along Odessa Street, on Peski, experiments with electric street lighting will be shown to the public."
Recalling this event, one of his eyewitnesses wrote: “... I don’t remember from what sources, probably from newspapers, I learned that on such and such a day, at such and such an hour, somewhere in the Sands, will be shown to the public experiments on electric lighting with Lodygin lamps. I passionately desired to see this new electric light... Many people went with us for the same purpose. Soon we came out of the darkness into some street with bright lighting. In two street lamps, kerosene lamps were replaced by incandescent lamps, which poured out a bright white light.
A crowd had gathered on the quiet and unattractive Odessa Street. Some of the visitors took newspapers with them. At first, these people approached a kerosene lamp, and then an electric one, and compared the distance at which one could read.
In memory of this event, a memorial plaque was installed on the house number 60 on Suvorovsky Prospekt.
In 1874, the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences awarded A.N. Lodygin the Lomonosov Prize for the invention of the carbon incandescent lamp. However, without receiving support from either the government or the city authorities, Lodygin was unable to establish mass production and widely use them for street lighting.
In 1879, 12 electric lamps were lit on the new Liteiny Bridge. “Candles” by P.N. Yablochkov were installed on lamps made according to the project of the architect Ts.A. "Russian light", so dubbed electric lights, made a splash in Europe. Later, these lanterns, which became legendary, were transferred to the current Ostrovsky Square. In 1880 the first electric lamps shone in Moscow. So, with the help of arc lamps in 1883, on the day of the Sacred Coronation of Alexander III, the area around the Cathedral of Christ the Savior was illuminated.
In the same year, a power plant began operating on the river. Moika at the Police Bridge (Siemens and Halske), and on December 30, 32 electric lamps illuminated Nevsky Prospekt from Bolshaya Morskaya Street to Fontanka. A year later, electric lighting appeared in neighboring streets. In 1886-99, 4 power stations were already operating for lighting needs (the Helios Society, the plant of the Belgian Society, etc.) and 213 such lamps were burning. By the beginning of the twentieth century. Petersburg had about 200 power plants. In the 1910s light bulbs with a metal filament appeared (since 1909 - tungsten lamps). On the eve of World War I, there were 13,950 street lamps in St. Petersburg (3,020 electric, 2,505 kerosene, 8,425 gas). By 1918, only electric lights lit the streets. And in 1920, even these few went out.
The streets of Petrograd were plunged into darkness for two whole years, and their lighting was restored only in 1922. Since the beginning of the 90s of the last century, much attention has been paid to artistic lighting of buildings and structures in the city. Traditionally, masterpieces of architectural art, museums, monuments, and administrative buildings are decorated in this way all over the world. Petersburg is no exception. The Hermitage, the Arch of the General Staff building, the building of the Twelve Colleges, the largest St. Petersburg bridges - the Palace, Liteiny, Birzhevoy, Blagoveshchensky (former Lieutenant Schmidt, and even earlier Nikolaevsky), Alexander Nevsky ... The list goes on. Created at a high artistic and technical level, the lighting design of historical monuments gives them a special sound.
Walking along the embankments at night is an unforgettable sight! The soft light and noble design of lamps can be appreciated by citizens and guests of the city on the streets and embankments of the evening and night of St. Petersburg. And the virtuoso lighting of the bridges will emphasize their lightness and severity and create a sense of the integrity of this amazing city, located on islands and dotted with rivers and canals.
Such an invention as a lantern turned out to be so useful that it became firmly established in everyday life for obvious reasons. Agree that in the civilized world there is not a single person who would never use this wonderful device! To get started with the world famous manufacturer of one of the best lanterns in terms of price and quality, I suggest that you familiarize yourself with the history of the lantern itself.
Lanterns in history
Since the time of the "taming" of fire, mankind has always been looking for and inventing ways to illuminate their lives in certain circumstances. The very first and most primitive lantern can be called an ordinary torch, which had a whole bunch of obvious flaws. Then, with the advent of wax, a candle was added to the means of lighting, and with the advent of combustible fuel, a kerosene lamp. Such light sources, although they were more advanced, also had their drawbacks - insecurity, short life and the release of harmful substances during combustion.
The first street lamps appeared in England in 1417. They owe their appearance to the mayor of London - Henry Burton, who promulgated a decree on lighting the streets of the city in the evenings, especially in winter.
The London lights looked pretty nice.
Subsequently, in 1667, the idea of lighting the city at night was supported by the French king Louis XIV, who ordered the installation of oil lanterns on poles and houses throughout Paris. He also ordered all residents to put lamps in the windows of houses facing the street.
In our country, for the first time, street lamps appeared in St. Petersburg in 1706 by decree of Tsar Peter I, who ordered that lamps be placed next to the Peter and Paul Fortress as a sign of victory over the Swedes. In 1718, lighting appeared on the embankment of the Neva River. And in 1730, street lighting appeared in Moscow.
The first street lamps of St. Petersburg.
The appearance of the first flashlight is directly related to the invention of the incandescent lamp. The discovery was made by two people at the same time. The first is the Russian scientist Alexander Lodygin, who in 1874 patented a lamp in which coal was used first as a rod, and then tungsten.
The second inventor is the American Thomas Edison, who made the lamp (1879) reliable, economical and durable. The success lay in the material for the lamp stem, which was used as charred bamboo shavings. Edison not only created a model that was practical and inexpensive to manufacture, but also mass-produced.
Subsequently, Edison used tungsten as the material for the lamp rod, which was already used by his Russian colleague Alexander Lodygin. This is how two inventors in different countries, one might say, jointly presented the world with an incandescent lamp.
But back to flashlights. Now there is a reliable and practical source of light, it remains to develop a source of portable energy.
History of the battery
The first electric battery, close to the modern type, was invented even before the advent of incandescent lamps in 1866 by the French inventor Georges Leclanche. It was a fairly large open glass vessel filled with an electrolyte and two electrodes. It is clear that such a power source could not be suitable as a battery for a flashlight. It was large in size, which is why it lacked mobility. But the main thing is that when the position changes, the liquid could easily pour out. The situation changed when, in 1896, German engineer Karl Gessner developed a small portable dry-type battery, which was a zinc cylinder filled with a solid, paste-like electrolyte.
The first solid electrolyte battery.
In fairness, one cannot fail to mention the so-called Baghdad battery, which was discovered in 1936 in the vicinity of Baghdad. The object is a vessel about 2000 years old, inside of which there is a copper cylinder with an iron rod. The throat is filled with bitumen, and another iron rod with traces of corrosion is passed through it. A copy of the find showed that if acid or wine or vinegar, which contain acid, is poured into a vessel, the "battery" will begin to produce a voltage of 1 volt. Although this does not prove that the vessel was once used as a source of food, as many skeptics believe. But, as they say, we have what we have.
Baghdad Battery
So, power sources and an incandescent lamp are invented. It remains to create the hand-held flashlight itself.
Hand flashlights
Inventor David Meisel distinguished himself here, who in 1896 received a patent for a hand-held flashlight powered by three batteries. The lantern itself had a wooden body and a switch in the form of a metal plate that closed the electrical circuit. In 1898, an American, an immigrant from the Russian Empire and inventor Conrad Hubert founded the Ever Ready Company for the production of small batteries. By the way, today everyone knows this company as Energizer.
In the same year, he buys out the patent from David and starts making hand torches. David Meisel stayed with Konrad to improve the lanterns. This is how the first lamp for a bicycle appeared, and in 1899 the first hand lamp of a cylindrical shape, which is already more familiar to us.
Such flashlights also had a number of drawbacks - they could not shine for a long time (you had to turn off the flashlight - it could not give a stable light for a long period), and the light was rather dim.
Then it was a matter of technology - the company produces the world's first catalog (1899) and 25 more types of lamps: table, bicycle, manual and other options. Thus began the era of hand-held electric lanterns - indispensable helpers that replaced the more imperfect and dangerous candles and kerosene lamps. Now you do not need to think about the problem of lighting at the right time and the right place!
Let's move on to the history of one of the most recognizable brands for the production of technological flashlights.
History of ArmyTek
It all started in 2007 when a small team from Canada got interested in LED lighting. The situation in this market was such that American and European companies offered reliable solutions, but lagged behind global trends in terms of technology, and Chinese manufacturers relied on affordability, but at the same time, they were inferior in quality and technology. Against the background of such a situation, the young company decided to go the other way and start producing products that have all the necessary criteria - relative availability, reliability, quality and manufacturability. And we have already talked about the production of lighting equipment.
For these purposes, a team of the best scientists and engineers in the aviation, military and even space industries was assembled. Thanks to this, it was possible to achieve amazing results in the production of a first-class product. Another important decision was the use of high-quality components from the USA and Japan, in particular, the best LEDs from the American manufacturer Cree.
This is how the first Predator tactical flashlight appeared, which at that time contained many innovative solutions. The lantern passed the most severe tests in various climatic conditions.
And in 2009, production was opened in China, due to which it was possible to achieve a competitive price and mass production while maintaining the same quality and modern technologies. This is still facilitated by the use of modern equipment, proven materials and a thorough quality control system for the final product.
The final stage in the development of the company was the legal registration in 2010 in Canada under the name Armytek Optoelectronics Inc.
Why are Armytek flashlights so captivating? As already noted, the use of advanced Japanese and American components, the use of the latest technologies and equipment in production in compliance with quality control, as well as reliability, durability and manufacturability. Lanterns calmly endure a fall from the tenth floor and immersion under water to a depth of 50 meters. Tactical options withstand the recoil of weapons of any caliber and continue to work smoothly. All this is reflected in the company's mission - to provide people with reliable and technologically the most advanced light in the world. The warranty from the manufacturer is as long as ten years for any flashlight!
And today, Armytek products are used by many people of different professions and occupations around the world: employees in special services, military, security workers, fishermen, hunters, rescuers, firefighters. Simply put, all those who need just such a trouble-free and hard-working flashlight, which at the same time has high-tech stuffing and various functions.
In the following articles, we will consider various models of Armytek flashlights.
To be continued...
"Have you heard the story about the old street lamp? It's not that much amusing, but it doesn't interfere with listening to it once. So, there was a kind of respectable old street lamp; he honestly served for many, many years and finally had to retire .
Last evening, a lantern hung on its pole, illuminating the street, and in his soul he felt like an old ballerina who performs on stage for the last time and knows that tomorrow she will be forgotten by everyone in her closet ... "
Hans Christian Andersen. "Old street lamp".
Elements of the urban landscape, which by chance passed through time, are monuments of a bygone era. They were forgotten, which helped them outlive their brethren. Have the old lanterns been preserved in our city? It turns out that yes, and quite a few - both the usual typical ones, characteristic of the era of the sixties and seventies, and non-standard decorative ones. It makes no sense to look for them on busy streets, but when you go into the yards, they are standing, and many even perform their functions regularly.
Here are the "working pensioners" of the early Brezhnev era:
SPPR-125 prismatic mercury pendant lamp with a diffuse reflector and a prismatic open refractor. The most common street lamp of the late 1960s and 1970s with a DRL-125 lamp (arc mercury lamp), or, as they were more fully called, high-pressure discharge lamps - arc mercury lamps with a phosphor (white glow). The lamp was ignited using a choke, which was located in the upper cylindrical structure of the lantern. The luminaire is mounted on a support with a concrete console.
The outdoor mercury lamp SPOR-250 was designed for the use of four-electrode lamps DRL-250.
These lanterns were found on the streets of Bogomolov (at the intersection with Gagarin) and Komintern (in the courtyard behind the Zarya store). The same pillars with concrete consoles are in the yards on the street. Karl Marx, Tereshkova, Grabin, etc. Drummer, but instead of old lamps they use modern ones:
A little about the pillars of this type. "Gusaki" - typical reinforced concrete lampposts with a characteristic concrete top, which were equipped with new buildings in Moscow and the Moscow region in the 60-70s. In those days, they still cared not only about technology, but also about aesthetics (albeit somewhat peculiar). Therefore, in most cases, a hidden (underground) supply of wires and modest but pretty lamps with incandescent lamps of the SPO (SPP)-200 type were provided. The renewed city was conceived with the carefully lit, albeit poor, light of "Ilyich's bulbs".
However, already at the end of the 70s, the party ordered to save electricity, due to which most of the "ganders" were simply abandoned. The other part was mercilessly uprooted and replaced with more modern, but faceless 8-meter supports with mercury lamps SPPR-125. And finally, the third, smallest part found its intended use: they were equipped with SPPR lamps and an air supply of wires. In this form, all this survived somewhere until the end of the 90s.
Here the third stage of the extermination of the "geese" began: apparently, the reinforced concrete brackets were ordered to be considered dilapidated because of their age. At the moment, most of the pillars have lost their recognizable elegant peaks, and pipe sections are screwed to them with improvised means for attaching modern lamps.
Nowadays, any concrete supports have already been recognized as unreliable and dangerous, as a result of which their mass demolition and replacement with analogues made of "can iron" began, most often with dim "smoldering" lamps of the DNAT-70 type and connected with a CIP wire. This is how the era of Soviet "gusakov" ends ingloriously before our eyes.
"Gusak" at DK them. M.I. Kalinin. Mid 1960s:
But some fifty years ago they were at the center of city events. Double "geese" at the cinema "Star". Mid 1960s:
Yards on st. Gorky. Luminaire SPPR-125 on a pole with a console in the form of a single pipe:
and double:
The building of the city hospital No. 2, built in 1932, together with the adjacent territory, turned out to be rich in finds. Here, for example, is a bracket for a pendant lamp. Traces of wiring fastening are clearly visible on the wall. The bracket was discovered by local historian E. Rybak eryback (see the album "Lanterns-flashlights" on Yandex photos: http://fotki.yandex.ru/users/eryback/album/161559/).
Not far from here, at the intersection of St. Dzerzhinsky and etc. Makarenko, a rare pillar of the 1950s or 1960s rises:
On the bracket is the no less rare "SPO-200 hanging open lamp", and in a simple way "hat", - the most common lantern50s of the twentieth century with an ordinary 150-200 W incandescent lamp. This lamp illuminatedbizarre yellowish light llook for a small piece of land under you.
The same "hat" on a wooden pole near the hospital building. Both of them are non-working:
And next to it is a lamp with a reflector resembling an inverted trough, of a brand unknown to me:
In the suburban area of the city on the street. Dobrolyubov and Kutuzov, at least three "hats" have been perfectly preserved. One of them not only hangs on the original old bracket, but also works! Rarity is incredible. Her place is clearly not here, but in the museum:
The modern Lermontov street in Korolyov, figuratively speaking, cuts off the twentieth century from the current century. On the east side rises a new residential quarter "Pionerskaya, 30" with modern street lighting. Along the western one there are seven in a row old lampposts with SPZP-500 lamps:
The lamps, apparently, are non-working, but most of them have preserved glass refracting shades:
Lamps of the same type at the Bolshevo station. 1970-80s:
Kindergarten "Vishenka" (Grabina st., 15) was opened in 1960. Lamps RKU-01-250-011 were installed on the territory approximately from the end of the 1970s:
On the territory of the Teremok kindergarten (3a Udarnika Ave., opened in 1956), the lamps are the same, but the poles, it is quite likely, are the same age as the buildings:
In the 1980s, quite famous andrecognizable street lampwas "Ambassador Elektrosvit" (Czechoslovakia) type 444 23 17. In the USSR, he received the nickname "humpback", and in the Czech Republic he is still called "camel" (velbloud). Perhaps the only copy in the city has been preserved on the territory of the kindergarten "Mosaic" (Gagarin St., 22):
A small abandoned lantern in the park on the street. The Comintern, apparently, has also been standing there since the 1980s:
Festive illumination of the 1980s (1990s?) on Sovetskaya Street in the md. Pervomaisky:
At house number 17 on Grabina Street, two artistically decorated wall lamps have been preserved above the window. Once upon a time they had glass shades:
An unsightly old lamp above the window of City Hospital No. 2:
And finally - miraculously preserved decorative metal lanterns. On old photos of the 40s - 60s. 20th century it is noticeable that there were many such lanterns in the city:
In those that have survived to this day, there are no lamps for a long time, there are only poles. Since the lanterns are not typical, it is more difficult to determine their age.
Three identical lanterns are located around the building built in the late 1950s - early 1960s (Lenin St., 4):
However, here is an archival photo taken on the street. Gagarin and dated 1945. To the right, in the distance, is the building of city baths, there are still no five-story buildings at all:
Isn't it true, exactly the same lanterns?!
Before the war, on one of the main streets of Kaliningrad - Stalin (now it is Tsiolkovsky Street) - there were only two five-story stone houses No. 23/11 and No. 25 (built in 1940). Since the beginning of the 1950s, the street and the neighborhoods adjacent to it from the south began to be built up with five-story houses. At the same time, a kindergarten (1952), a secondary school (1953) and a three-story clinic were built.
In the 1960s, a hospital campus was built near the clinic. Later, all these medical institutions became part of the Central City Hospital No. 1.
An old alley leads from the clinic at a right angle to Tsiolkovsky Street through the hospital park. Around the building and along the alley among the thickets, four decorative lanterns of the type described above have been preserved. The fifth hides in the northwestern corner of the park on another, diagonal alley, which also once connected the polyclinic with Tsiolkovsky Street, and now rests against the fence. There are no other such lamps on the territory of the hospital. With a high degree of probability, we can say that they were installed in the 1950s.
The fact that lanterns of this type were very common in the then Kaliningrad is also evidenced by the fact that another of their "brothers" still stands in the very center of the city - on Tereshkova Street, across the street from the Central Palace of Culture. M.I. Kalinin. Most likely, it is older than the DK building. Perhaps this lamppost has survived to this day also because it perfectly disguises itself as the surrounding vegetation. I passed by countless times without seeing it point-blank, and I recently discovered it only because I carefully searched:
In July 2014, the vegetation was thinned out, and the lamppost appeared in all its glory:
Another decorative lantern stands near the checkpoint of RSC Energia, slightly dissonant with the surrounding space. I can’t determine its age:
Lanterns with a decorative element in the form of a harp are located on the territory of the former kindergarten (Gagarin St., 14a):
According to history, the first attempts to use artificial lighting in urban streets belong to the beginning of the 15th century.
Back in 1417, the mayor of London, Henry Barton, gave the order to hang street lamps winter evenings. He took this step in order to dispel the impenetrable darkness in the British capital. The French decided not to lag behind and, after some time, took up his initiative.
baselon lanterns gaudí
At the very beginning of the 16th century, every inhabitant of the French capital was obliged to keep lamps at the windows that face the street. It was under Louis XIV that Paris was filled with the lights of numerous lanterns. In 1667, he issued a decree on street lighting, for which he received the nickname "King Sun". According to legend, it was thanks to this decree that the reign of Louis was called brilliant.
Venice
The first street lamps gave relatively little light, since they used ordinary candles and oil. After, when kerosene was already used, the brightness of lighting was significantly increased, but the real revolution of street light happened only at the beginning of the 19th century, when gas lamps appeared. They were invented by an Englishman - inventor William Murdoch. Naturally, at first he was ridiculed. 
Voronezh
Walter Scott himself wrote to one of his friends that some madman was proposing to light London with smoke. These taunts did not stop Murdoch from bringing his idea to life, and he successfully demonstrated the benefits of gas lighting.
Germany
In 1807, lanterns of a new design were installed on Pall Mall and soon conquered all European capitals. In Russia, street lighting appeared under Peter I.
Egypt
In 1706, he ordered to hang lanterns on the facades of some houses near the Peter and Paul Fortress to celebrate the victory over the Swedes near Kalisz.
Kyiv This chandelier serves as a street lamp near a cafe
In 1718, the first stationary lamps appeared on the streets of St. Petersburg, and 12 years later, Empress Anna Ioannovna ordered them to be installed in Moscow.
China
The history of electric lighting is associated primarily with the names of the Russian inventor Alexander Lodygin and the American Thomas Edison.
Lviv
In 1873, Lodygin designed a carbon incandescent lamp, for which he received the Lomonosov Prize from the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. Such lamps were soon used to illuminate the St. Petersburg Admiralty. A few years later, Edison demonstrated an improved light bulb - brighter and cheaper to manufacture.
Moscow
With its advent, gas lamps quickly disappeared from city streets, giving way to electric ones.
Budapest
in Bryansk
Venice
Venice
Vienna
Dubrovnik
Castle Egg Bavaria Alps
Zichron Yaakov 19th century
Spain
China city Shenzhen
Kronstadt
London
Lviv
Lviv
Lviv
Moscow
Moscow
Over Damascus
Odessa
Paris
Shevchenko Park Kyiv
Peter
Peter
Siena turtle area
Rome
Talin
Look around, the world is still full of beauty...
Street lighting is what people have needed since ancient times. Human settlements surrounded by virgin forests attracted the attention of predators, who often ran into the streets, yes, and dashing people played pranks in the dark, so it was dangerous to leave the houses at night.
What made people light up the streets primitively - with bonfires, wood-burning lamps, torches. As civilization and urbanization grew, the issue of street lighting became more and more acute. With the invention of candles, street lamps appeared with candles inside or oil wicks, such devices gave very little light and the light was rather dim.
In Paris in the 16th century, the issue of street lighting was simply solved, they were forced to put lamps on the windows facing the street in order to somehow illuminate the streets. That also gave a very weak effect. But in 1417, the mayor of London also tried to solve the problems with lighting by ordering oil lamps to be hung in the streets. After the invention of kerosene, lanterns began to give light brighter, but still quite dim. In 1807, William Murdoch in England invented a revolutionary method for that time - a gas lamp, which began to illuminate the streets of London.
In Russia in 1706 on one of the holidays. In St. Petersburg, by decree of Peter I, it was ordered to hang lanterns on the facades of houses on the Petrograd side. The townspeople of the capital liked this innovation and lanterns began to be hung on the facades throughout the city. The beginning of street lighting in Russia can be considered 1706.
And also by decree of Peter 1 in St. Petersburg they began to install night lights according to the Dutch model. Simple, without architectural frills, a glazed lamp was mounted on a wooden stand, just as simple in maintenance, there was a door inside the lamp, there was an oil lamp. They gave little light, but indicated the direction. Initially, the police department was engaged in lanterns.
Both architects and engineers took up the design of street lamps. In 1730, the architect Leblon developed a project of street lamps for the capital. It is fundamentally different from simple Dutch lamps. A round lantern was attached to a wooden pole, painted in blue and white stripes, on a metal rod, which could be lowered and raised. Hemp oil burned in the lantern. First, such lanterns appeared at the palace of Peter I on the embankment, and then gradually all over the city. Together with the lanterns, the profession of a lamplighter appeared, a person who had to watch the lanterns: clean them, light them in the evening, and extinguish them in the morning, add oil (freeing the policemen from this occupation).
With the advent of gas lamps, the quality of lighting has improved significantly. In the 19th century, gas lanterns quickly came into use in all European countries, starting with the capitals, Paris, Berlin, etc. In Russia, in St. Petersburg, the first gas lanterns appeared in 1819, also quite soon, in Moscow in the 50s. Such lanterns were used in the cities of Russia even before 1930. Luminous gas for lanterns was obtained by dry distillation of hard and brown coal, peat or wood.
The composition of the lighting gas includes:
carbon monoxide,
methane,
hydrogen.
Dry distillation occurs in the following way: coal is loaded into a closed container and heated to a temperature of 500-600 degrees without air access, as a result of which coal begins to decompose into volatile mixtures (gases) and solid residue (coke). This process is called pyrolysis. These gases form the light gas. Luminous gas is also called blue gas after the inventor Blau, a German engineer. In 1913, the Dutch engineer Heike invented gas liquefaction technology, for which he received the Nobel Prize.
Gas at low temperatures and under high pressure turns into a liquid state.
Inside the buildings they made storages for lighting gas, with the outlet of pipes blocked by valves into the outer wall, from where, through rubberized tubes, the lamplighters drew it into retorts and filled the lanterns with it.
The architect Auguste Montferan developed a project for gas-powered street lamps.
Due to the great need for lighting gas in cities, gas plants began to be built and gas holders became their obligatory accessory - large-diameter brick towers (diameter about 40 m, height about 20 m). In some cities, they have survived to this day as monuments of industrial architecture.
From the gas tank, the gas was distributed through cast-iron pipes, an underground gas pipeline, and then connected to the lanterns, and in the lantern it was distributed through smaller metal tubes. And in the same way, the lamplighter in the evening, lit the gas in the lanterns, and extinguished it in the morning.
In 1876, Pavel Yablochkov invented the electric light bulb. And already in 1878 in Kronstadt (on the territory of the naval base, where various innovations were tested and not far from the capital), the first electric street lights started working, and soon the squares near the St. Petersburg theaters were also lit up with electric light. In Moscow, electric lighting appeared for the first time around the square near the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in 1880. With the invention of electric lighting, the profession of a lamplighter also disappeared. Lanterns were already lit automatically, and a separate department monitored their condition.
In 1880, Thomas Edison invented and patented his electric light bulb. Thanks to the commercial streak characteristic of the Americans, he quickly developed an enterprise for their production and import around the world.
Initially, electricity for lamps was generated by small generators, but with the development of electrification, electrical substations began to be built.
This is how the history of the street lamp developed. And its development has not yet stopped. Ahead - new types of street lighting are not yet known to us.