Brilliant : the evolution of artificial light / Jane Brox.
Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010Description: 360 p. ; 22 cmContent type: text Media type: unmediated Carrier type: volume 001: 41730ISBN: 9780285640818Subject(s): Product design | Lighting | Lighting, Architectural and decorative--History | Lighting -- HistoryDDC classification: 621.3209 BROItem type | Current library | Collection | Call number | Copy number | Status | Date due | Barcode | |
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Book | MAIN LIBRARY Book | 621.3209 BRO (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | 1 | Available | 111429 |
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621.309 DUN History of electrical engineering | 621.3192 DRA Electrical circuits: including machines | 621.3209 BOG The End of Night : Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light | 621.3209 BRO Brilliant : the evolution of artificial light / | 621.321 PRI Lighting | 621.322 BOY Human factors in lighting : second edition / | 621.322 CHA Code for interior lighting 1994 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
Each development of artificial light, from stone lamps to the lightbulb, along with its companion invention, electricity, has transformed human civilisation and shaped the way we live. The implications of providing light has shaped historical eras: crude lamps and tallow candles constricted waking hours and their meagre illumination restricted daily life, oil lamps created the crazed hunting of whales for their oil while gaslight helped to create leisure hours in the evening and allowed the emergence of vibrant street life in cities.Edison's invention of the lightbulb seemed to produce light that required no human effort or cost and yet, as Jane Brox shows, the environmental cost of that system of lighting is still with us. With the spread of light pollution the majority of the Earth's population can no longer see the Milky Way in the night sky, Jane Brox brilliantly explores how the technology behind artificial light has been the catalyst for industrialisation and consumerism yet it has also led to a disconnection from the natural rhythms of the earth.In the tradition of Mark Kurlansky's Cod in its reach and scope, Brilliant is a compelling story of how human lives have been changed by light, and timely questions about how the light of the future will continue to shape our lives. Bringing the increasingly important issue of light pollution to the fore, Brilliant is full of the voices of those whose lives were revolutionised by artificial light over the centuries, and with stunning insights into how science has directed human history and will continue to do so in the future.Tracing the fascinating history of human light, from stone lamps to the lightbulb, the story of light is also the story of evolving humanity. The class, social and environmental implications of providing light has shaped historical eras: crude lamps and tallow candles constricted waking hours and drove the crazed hunting of whales for their oil towards environmental disaster. Gaslight helped to create leisure hours in the evening and allowed the emergence of vibrant street life in cities while incandescent light changed the ways we live and sleep. Jane Brox asks the reader to consider the cost of the current grid system for providing light.
The Earth at night as seen from space -- Lascaux : the first lamp -- Time of dark streets -- Lanterns at sea -- Gaslight -- Towards a more perfect flame -- Life electric -- Incandescence -- Overwhelming brilliance : the White City -- Niagara : long distance light -- New century, last flame -- Gleaming things -- Alone in the dark -- Rural electrification -- Cold light -- Wartime : the return of old night -- Lascaux discovered -- Blackout, 1965 -- Imagining the next grid -- At the mercy of light -- More is less -- The once and future light -- Lascaux revisited.
Documents the role of light in history, tracing how the development of specific innovations had a pivotal influence on social and cultural evolution.
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Library Journal Review
NBCC Award finalist Brox (Five Thousand Days Like This One: An American Family History) examines our relationship with light, our attempts to harness it to brighten places we cannot see, and its impact on American psychology and culture. Her book dovetails beautifully with the social history of technology, as our relationship with light has encompassed the development of candles, lamps, light bulbs, and even far-reaching sociotechnical systems. Brox seems at her best exploring electrification's impact on early 20th-century rural America. This is unsurprising considering the subjects of her previous Here and Nowhere Else: Late Seasons of a Farm and Its Family and Clearing Land: Legacies of the American Farm. Particularly engaging are her discussion of Franklin Roosevelt's establishment of the Tennessee Valley Authority, its designers' hopes of engineering a better society, and the realities of its implementation. -Verdict This well-written, well-researched, and thought-provoking book has much to offer. The general reader with an interest in the (social) history of technology will find it both a source of inspiration for considering technology's impact on our lives and a springboard to more scholarly works such as David Nye's Electrifying America.-Jonathan Bodnar, Georgia Inst. of Technology Lib. & Information Ctr., Atlanta (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.Publishers Weekly Review
A superb history of how the availability of ever more artificial light has changed our world over the centuries, from stone lamps in prehistoric caves to contemporary light-emitting diodes (LEDs). No simpleminded technological determinist, Brox (Here and Nowhere Else) appreciates how culture and technology have affected each other at every stage. She repeatedly reveals how humankind's increasing ability to extend the hours of light available for work and for leisure has been critical to the evolution of societies almost everywhere. Her readings of, for example, prehistoric southern French caves, medieval and early modern villages, whaling and other ships, industrializing cities, Chicago's White City of 1893, and wartime and peacetime blackouts are invariably fascinating and often original. In addition, she conveys technical information clearly and concisely. Brox's concluding portions, about the unexpected negative effects of too much artificial light on observatories in southern California and elsewhere, are provocative and dismaying. With Brox's beautiful prose, this book amply lives up to its title. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reservedCHOICE Review
"Artificial" light is light produced by deliberate human action, everything from pine torches to LEDs. Author Brox is interested in the interaction between technologies for the production of light and the social systems in which they are embedded--the intersection of history of technology and social history. A series of episodes focuses on the impact of new modes of light (candles, gaslight, electric lights) and the increasingly complex networks of commerce to support them. Though most of the events have been described before, Brox deftly weaves descriptions of technical innovations, economic activity, personal stories, and social trends to evoke historical episodes. The last section of the work deals with a number of current issues surrounding light: light pollution of the night sky, fragility of the US electric grid, and appropriate techniques for providing light in underdeveloped areas of the world. Summing Up: Recommended. General readers and lower- and upper-division undergraduates. D. Bantz University of AlaskaBooklist Review
Brox's fluency in history blossomed in the third of her memoirs about her family's farm, Clearing Land (2004). She now leaps from cultivation to illumination to cover another watershed in human civilization, the development of artificial light. A companionable writer, Brox begins by considering the simple yet ingenious lamps used by the artists who created prehistoric cave paintings, then moves on describe the exhausting labor involved in making household tallow candles. Whaling and whale oil lamps, the rise of gaslight, and the invention of kerosene and the start of the oil industry--Brox elucidates each wave of technological innovation with lively interest and an eye to social ramifications. Naturally the story of electricity dominates, delivering a curious cast of inventors to the page along with incisive critiques of electrical inequities, the appliance boom, and the need today for a new smart grid. Brox also explains the adverse consequences of continual artificial light on humans and wildlife. Invaluable and thought-provoking, Brox's inquiry into artificial light reminds us that the too-much-of-a-good-thing paradox is inherent in all of our technological endeavors.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2010 BooklistThere are no comments on this title.