Before the advent of Thomas Edison’s incandescent light bulb, people everywhere relied on comparatively dangerous methods to light up their homes, businesses, and cities. One form or another of fueling a flame for light was used for thousands of years, be it burning gas, oil, simply some sort of flammable material such as wood or candles (Freeburg 5). No matter the region in the world, the flame’s universal prevalence as the chief means of illumination by the 1800’s meant its replacement would have to contend with the commercial viability of whale oil, kerosene, and gas. Right up until Edison’s time of the late 1800’s, gas lamps were prevalent all over America to provide light in cities, a major fire hazard if a gas leak were to be present and set off by even the smallest spark. This age of open flame would come to be extinguished by the turn of the 20th century with the onset of the Industrial Revolution.
Throughout the years, various attempts were made to conceive of a practical alternative means of lighting for society. One prominent invention finally developed in the late 1800s by Elihu Thomson, Edward Weston, and Charles Brush to create a more efficient system of lighting was the arc lighting system, consisting of two pencil-like carbon rods separated by an insulating layer of gypsum that glowed when lit by a flame (Baldwin 104). Around the time that Edison was setting up his own system of electric lighting along Pearl Street in New York with light bulbs in 1882, the Brush Electric Company was implementing an arc lighting system on Broadway as his direct competitor, threatening to brutally stymie his business (Baxter 87). However, this system had its own host of problems, most notably the sparks they sometimes gave off that were a fire hazard to the structures around them after burning for just one to two hours, as well as the fact that they could only be used outdoors as their 4000 candlepower brightness was unfeasib...