8/25/2014 CABINET // Blinded by the Light http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/21/archibald.php 1/7 I SSUE 21 ELECTRICITY SPRING 2006 Blinded by the Light SASHA ARCHIBALD Few concepts are so intimately wed as that of knowledge and light. Yet among the myriad experiences of light—"dawning awareness," "dim understanding," "seeing the light," etc.—there is one that seems to have little relationship to the province of philosophy: a kind of light that does not permit clarity of thought, but is instead blinding, painful, or disorienting. Whereas the light of illumination might be described as "the letting appear" that does not itself appear, 1 this other kind of light is said to dazzle, or to let nothing appear, at least nothing besides itself. Those lacking insight are usually considered "in the dark," but dazzlement is often a better description: the madman of Michel Foucault's Madness & Civilization, for instance, is not deprived of light, but actually "drunk on a light." 2 Similarly do the cave dwellers of Plato's allegory suffer when coaxed out into the sun. Truth, it seems, is only revealed by a very controlled and precise amount of illumination—too little of it, or too much, and light fails the task. The Spatial distribution of incandescent light under verious lampshades, from Louis Bell, The Art of Illumination, 1912 With the advent of electric light in the nineteenth century, the distinction between illumination and dazzlement took on new life in the literal, physical experience of the general public. Electricity at the turn of the century was not a scaledback version of electric light today, but rather just the opposite: Finally with the means to light each crack of every sidewalk and each corner of every railway station, people did exactly that. According to one newspaper, the houses in St. Petersburg, Russia, were lit so as to see a fly on the wall, even a fly 400 paces from the source of light, 3 while another paper described with awe how "the trees and flowers are plainly visible in every detail of leaf, petal and twig ... the very stones of the gravel walk, the mosses on the wall ... are visible." 4 Whereas most of daily life before electricity was conducted in the shadows, electroenthusiasts aimed to eradicate the shadow completely, to march into the twentieth century in a blaze of unadulterated light. In some cases, the demand for brightness even outstripped the availability of electricity. According to Gösta M. Bergman's history of theater lighting, the "incipient light cult" that hit theaters in the 1880s, for instance, was actually not directly attributable to electric light—only a few theaters were wired for it—but to its associative effects: electric light in a few theaters Magazine Events Books Projects Info Rental Subscriptions Shop Search
Few concepts are so intimately wed as that of knowledge and light. Yet among the myriad experiences of light—"dawning awareness," "dim understanding," "seeing the light," etc.—there is one that seems to have little relationship to the province of philosophy: a kind of light that does not permit clarity of thought, but is instead blinding, painful, or disorienting. Whereas the light of illumination might be described as "the letting appear"
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Few concepts are so intimately wed as that of knowledge and light. Yetamong the myriad experiences of light—"dawning awareness," "dimunderstanding," "seeing the light," etc.—there is one that seems to havelittle relationship to the province of philosophy: a kind of light that does notpermit clarity of thought, but is instead blinding, painful, or disorienting.Whereas the light of illumination might be described as "the letting appear"
that does not itself appear,1 this other kind of light is said to dazzle, or to letnothing appear, at least nothing besides itself. Those lacking insight areusually considered "in the dark," but dazzlement is often a betterdescription: the madman of Michel Foucault's Madness & Civilization, for
instance, is not deprived of light, but actually "drunk on a light."2 Similarlydo the cave dwellers of Plato's allegory suffer when coaxed out into the sun.Truth, it seems, is only revealed by a very controlled and precise amount ofillumination—too little of it, or too much, and light fails the task.
The Spatial distribution of incandescent light under verious lampshades, fromLouis Bell, The Art of Illumination, 1912
With the advent of electric light in the nineteenth century, the distinctionbetween illumination and dazzlement took on new life in the literal, physicalexperience of the general public. Electricity at the turn of the century wasnot a scaled-back version of electric light today, but rather just the opposite:Finally with the means to light each crack of every sidewalk and each cornerof every railway station, people did exactly that. According to one newspaper,the houses in St. Petersburg, Russia, were lit so as to see a fly on the wall,
even a fly 400 paces from the source of light,3 while another paper describedwith awe how "the trees and flowers are plainly visible in every detail of leaf,petal and twig ... the very stones of the gravel walk, the mosses on the wall
... are visible."4 Whereas most of daily life before electricity was conducted inthe shadows, electro-enthusiasts aimed to eradicate the shadow completely,to march into the twentieth century in a blaze of unadulterated light. Insome cases, the demand for brightness even outstripped the availability ofelectricity. According to Gösta M. Bergman's history of theater lighting, the"incipient light cult" that hit theaters in the 1880s, for instance, wasactually not directly attributable to electric light—only a few theaters werewired for it—but to its associative effects: electric light in a few theaters
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seems to have provoked brighter lights in all theaters.5 "It would seem that
[electricity's] mere existence makes an increase of light necessary," as one
reviewer wryly commented.6 Such bombastic enthusiasm for the new
technology created spaces that were dizzyingly bright—spaces where,
paradoxically, it was impossible to see anything besides the light itself.
To be fair, the brightness wasn't all due to overzealous installation. There
was little to choose from in the way of electric lights at the time, and few, if
any, devices capable of diminishing the light's intensity. The usual story of
electric light (at least in America) begins with Thomas Edison unveiling his
incandescent bulb at Menlo Park in 1879, but in fact, the incandescent was
Edison's attempt to improve on another form of electric illumination in
widespread use—the arc lamp. Invented in 1801 by Sir Humphry Davy, the
arc lamp created light (and a great amount of heat) via an electric charge
arcing between two rods of carbon. The first arcs required a source of power
independent to each and constant monitoring of the burning rods, but
following centralized power stations ("dynamos") and improved design, the
light came into common use. It was several times over the brightest artificial
illumination available: for comparison, a gas lamp measured between three
and eight candlepower (the standard for light measurement at the time), a
carbon incandescent between 300 and 500, and an arc lamp anywhere from
10,000 to 100,000. At the top of its range, the arc was about as bright as a
modern searchlight.
"A lamp for a nightmare!" was how Robert Louis Stevenson described the
sterile white light of the arc lamp, a light that completely lacked the warm
orange tones of gas or yellowish cast of candlelight. "Such a light as this," he
continued, "should shine only on murders and public crime, or along the
corridors of lunatic asylums, a horror to heighten horror."7 The arc was
indeed used in lunatic asylums, but also in factories (where it was
responsible for the first night shift), as well as exhibit halls, railway stations,
and libraries. The light of a department store, as described by Émile Zola in
his 1883 novel Ladies' Paradise, was a penetrating "white brightness of ablinding fixity": "There was nothing now," Zola's character states, "but this
blinding white light."8 Indeed, descriptions of electric light in this period as
brilliantly white are repeated ad infinitum, and epitomized in the terming ofChicago in 1893 "The Great White City," or New York's strip of early electric
signs "The Great White Way." In the form of street lighting, the light's
intensity created violent contrast between lit and unlit. The usual solution—
raising the light and doubling its strength—exponentially increased the total
amount of light, against which women were known to open their umbrellas.
There was surely a degree of pain suffered for such brilliance. It was
impossible to look directly at a nearby arc lamp;; even at long distances, the
light seared the eye. Stories of temporary vision loss were not uncommon,
and there seems to have been growing awareness in the phenomenon of
after-images as a warning sign of retinal fatigue.9 Writers complained that
schools were a "factory for bad eyes"10 and lighting specialists articulated
their professional goal as alleviating the pangs most people feel when
viewing buildings lit up at night.11 The arc lamp was not the only problem, as
the new carbon incandescents were also dangerously bright, especially when
used in the home. In one case of "retinal burn," a person sitting two feet
from an unshaded incandescent went blind after a few weeks of daily
exposure.
Louis Bell's The Art of Illumination, first published in 1902 and revised andexpanded a decade later, seems to have been the first publication to draw
attention to the situation. Argued with the pedantic tone of a man who feels
Hegemony of Vision, ed. David Michael Levin (Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress, 1993), p. 31.
2 Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age ofReason, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Vintage Books, 1988), p. 108.3 Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Disenchanted Night: The Industrialization of Light inthe 19th Century, trans. Angela Davies (Berkeley: University of California Press,1995), p. 118.
4 4The Sanitarian, 1878. Cited by Schivelbusch, p. 114.5 Gösta M. Bergman, Lighting in the Theatre (Stockholm: Almquist & WiksellInternational, 1977), p. 287.
6 E. Mascart, from J. Lefevre, L'Electricité au théatre (1884). Cited byBergman, p. 296.
7 Robert Louis Stevenson, "A Plea for Gas Lamps" (1917). Cited bySchivelbusch, p. 134.
8 Cited in Christoph Asendorf, Batteries of Life: On the History of Things andTheir Perception in Modernity, trans. Don Reneau (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1993), p. 161.
9 Staring at an arc lamp, as Schivelbusch notes, was very much like staring ata "small sun" (Schivelbusch, p. 118). After-images had in fact been studied as a
scientific phenomenon for some time. Three famous nineteenth-century
scientists, including Sir David Brewster, inventor of the kaleidoscope, severely
damaged their eyes by staring at the sun in order to produce after-images. See
Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in theNineteenth Century (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1992), p. 141.10 Cited in Louis Bell, The Art of Illumination (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1912),p. 344.
11 W. D'A. Ryan, "Illumination of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition,"General Electric Review, Vol XVIII, no. 6 (June 1915), p. 580.12 Bell, p. 1113 Ibid., p. 214 Bergman, p. 294. See also Schivelbusch, p. 199.15 Bell, p. 30616 Schivelbusch, p. 180.17 Flower motifs were supposedly Mary Edison's idea, and the only knowninstance of the inventor's wife having any part in his business decisions. See
Charles Bazerman, The Languages of Edison's Light (Cambridge, Mass: MITPress, 1999).
18 Cited in William Leach, Land of Desire: Merchants, Power and the Rise of aNew American Culture (New York: Pantheon, 1993), p. 343.
Sasha Archibald is an associate editor of Cabinet.
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