Street lighting. History of street lighting. History of a street lamp, features of occurrence History of street lighting

In 1417, London mayor Henry Barton ordered that lanterns be hung out. 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, but the real street light revolution happened only in early XIX 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 “lighting 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 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 lighting in the streets 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.

Lighting northern capital was a lucrative business, and the merchants willingly engaged in 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, Memorial plaque at 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 Holy Coronation 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, 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 the islands and dotted with rivers and canals.

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 monitor 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 the gas liquefaction technology, for which he received 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, lamplighters drew it into retorts and filled the lanterns with it.
The architect Auguste Montferan developed a project for gas-powered street lamps.
In connection with 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.

The bonfire and torch, which has a history of about two hundred thousand years, can be considered the first attempt at street lighting.

The prototypes of a street lamp appeared more than two and a half thousand years ago in Ancient Greece, where bowls filled with a combustible substance, mainly oil, were installed on tripods to illuminate the streets. At about the same time, the first sky lanterns appeared in China - lightweight structures made of rice paper stretched over a wooden or bamboo frame. A miniature burner is fixed inside the flashlight, the burning time of which is no more than 15-20 minutes. IN Ancient Rome in addition to torches, oil lanterns made of bronze began to be used. Such lanterns were either portable - they were carried by slaves, illuminating the path of their master, or they were installed in special holders on the walls, both indoors and outdoors. To keep the flame from going out in the wind, the walls of the lantern were covered with oiled cloth, bull bladder or bone plates.

Medieval Europe did not know such a thing as street lighting. The townspeople still used portable lanterns or lamps, mostly oil ones. With the development of industry and the growth of cities, the need arose for lighting. London became the pioneer of urban lighting, where the first street lamps appeared at the beginning of the 15th century: by order of the mayor of the city in 1417, the townspeople began to hang lanterns, the light source in which was a wick dipped in oil. Paris was the next city to adopt a primitive urban lighting system: residents were required to put oil or candle lamps on windows facing the street. Later, by decree of King Louis XIV, the first street lamps appeared in the city. Systems approach The lighting of cities was first undertaken in Amsterdam, where lanterns were installed in 1669, the design of which remained unchanged until the middle of the 19th century.

Lanterns filled with hemp oil began to appear on the streets of St. Petersburg since 1707. After 23 years, city lighting reached Moscow: glass lanterns were hung on wooden poles located at an equal distance from each other. Oil was first replaced by kerosene, which was cheaper and gave brighter light, and then by gas. London is the first city where gas lighting became part of the urban infrastructure as early as the beginning of the 19th century. The invention of electricity and incandescent lamps completely changed the face of cities, lanterns ceased to exist and appeared everywhere due to the availability, durability and safety of electricity. The first street to receive electric lights in Moscow was Tverskaya.

In the Art Nouveau era, the widespread use of electricity made a real revolution in lighting. The breakthrough was associated with the ability to turn the light source and direct it not up, as it was in all previous years, but down, while improving the illumination of the space.

Despite the fact that the light source has changed over the centuries, the appearance of the street lamp has undergone minimal changes. Of course, new technologies allow you to experiment with both materials and design, but when talking about street lamps, we present traditional four- or six-sided lamps, narrowed at the bottom and mounted on a pole or bracket. Lamps, as a rule, were not divided into street and interior ones.

Decor elements were characteristic of all lamps according to the style prevailing in a given period of time.

In our salon you can buy antique chandeliers made in the late 19th and mid-20th centuries in various styles - this is a current classic that will be appropriate in a museum, in a city apartment, and in the country.

The history of street lamps The very first street lamps appeared at the beginning of the 15th century. By order of the mayor of London, Henry Barton, in 1417, street lamps began to be hung out. At the beginning of the 16th century, the inhabitants of Paris were obliged to keep lamps near the windows that face the street. At first, lanterns produced relatively little light, since they used ordinary candles and oil. The use of kerosene made it possible to significantly increase the brightness of the lighting. Gas lamps appeared at the beginning of the 19th century. Their inventor was the Englishman William Murdoch. In 1807, lanterns of a new design were installed on Pall Mall and soon conquered all European capitals.

Street lamps in Russia In Russia, street lamps appeared under Peter I in 1706 in St. Petersburg on the facades of some houses near the Peter and Paul Fortress. The first stationary lamps appeared on the streets of St. Petersburg in 1718. In Moscow, street lamps appeared in 1730 by decree of Empress Anna Ioannovna. Instead of candles, hemp oil with a wick was lit in them. Oil lamps reigned in Moscow for almost 150 years. Moscow in 1730 The first electric street lamps in Moscow appeared in 1880. The unusual orange light of imported console lamps with high-pressure sodium lamps, which were installed in Moscow in 1975 on Okhotny Ryad and Lubyanka, became calling card cities. Moscow1880Moscow1975Okhotny RyadLubyanka

The first street lamps burning on hemp oil appeared in St. Petersburg in 1718 and were intended to illuminate the surroundings of the Winter Palace and the Main Admiralty. Their project was developed by the architect J. B. A. Leblon. At the turn of the XVIII-XIX centuries. Petersburg oil lantern was a 4-sided (rarely spherical) lamp, which was mounted on a wooden pole, painted in white and blue stripes. In 1777 there were about 2,300 oil lanterns in the city. granite stands began to be used as supports for such lamps, and from the 1820s. - cast-iron poles (cast according to the drawings of engineer P.P. Bazin).

Let's look into history The weak light of oil lamps could not satisfy the need for O. at .; there was a need for a more powerful light source. In the summer of 1819, the first experimental gas tank was built in the church on Aptekarsky Island, and in the autumn the first gas lamps were lit. In 1835, the Society for Lighting with Gas was founded. St. Petersburg", which had a monopoly on industrial production and sale of gas. The construction of a gas plant in the Obvodny Canal area made it possible in 1839 to illuminate Palace Square, Nevsky Prospekt and a number of streets adjacent to them with the help of gas lamps. Gas lamps (6- and 8-sided) were fastened with screws to cast-iron poles. In the 1860s O.'s development at. in St. Petersburg is connected mainly with the activities of the "Society of Metropolitan Lighting", created in 1858, and, to a lesser extent, the "French Joint-Stock Company". Gas lamps were installed only in the central part of the city, the outskirts and small streets were illuminated by old oil lamps and alcohol-turpentine lamps, which appeared in St. Petersburg. In 1863, kerosene street lamps lit up for the first time in St. oil and alcohol.

Let's look into history Experiments on electric lighting of streets in St. Petersburg were carried out from the beginning of the 1870s. The first electric lamps (with carbon incandescent lamps by A. N. Lodygin) were lit in July 1873 on Odessa Street, on Sands. P. N. Yablochkov’s lanterns with candles were installed to illuminate Liteiny Bridge. In 1883, the Electrical Engineering Society built on a wooden barge on the river. Moika at the Police (now Narodny) bridge, a power plant, which on December 30, 1883 gave current to 32 electric lamps that illuminated Nevsky Prospekt from Bolshaya Morskaya Street (now Herzen Street) to Anichkov Bridge. From August 1884, electric lights also lit up on the streets adjacent to Nevsky Prospekt. In 1886, the "Joint-Stock Company for Electric Lighting" was established in St. Petersburg. Construction in three power plants alternating current(see Power supply) made it possible to light all the main streets of the city with electric lamps. By 1915, there were about 3,000 electric street lamps in St. Petersburg, located mainly in the central regions, and more than 12,500 gas and kerosene lamps in the outskirts.

Let's look into history By 1927, kerosene lanterns were mostly replaced by electric ones, and by the mid-30s. gas lighting was also eliminated. Electric lighting has become a special branch of the urban economy. During the years of the pre-war five-year plans (), special power supply networks were laid in Leningrad. With the end of the 50s. the technical re-equipment of outdoor lighting began - incandescent lamps were replaced by gas-discharge light sources. In the 60s. for O. at. mainly mercury-helium lamps were used, emitting a bright, but "cold" light. In 1978, the first arc sodium lamps lit up on Yuri Gagarin Avenue, giving a "warm" yellow light, by the end of the 80s. they illuminated Nevsky Prospekt and part of Moskovsky Prospekt, Aeroflotnaya Street and other highways of the city. By 1990, about 160 thousand lamps were installed on the streets and squares of Leningrad. The operation of electrical installations of urban outdoor lighting is carried out by the management of Lensvet.

Once upon a time there lived a dragon. His name was Komodo. He knew how to spew fire, and therefore all the surrounding inhabitants were afraid of him. Hearing his footsteps, everyone ran and hid. And it was hard not to hear his steps, because Komodo wore three pairs of shoes at once - dragons have six legs! - and all six shoes together, and even each shoe separately, creaked terribly. But one day, Komodo met a girl, Susie, who was not at all afraid of him. Why are you spewing fire? she asked. You scare everyone! "Well," said the dragon, "I... hmm... I don't know." Somehow I didn't think about it. What, no more fear? “Of course not,” Susie said. "Okay, I won't," Komodo promised. They said goodbye and Susie went home. It was already dark, but for some reason the lamplighter Charlie did not light the lights, and the passers-by did not really know where to go. It turns out that Charlie didn't even get out of bed that day. He was too tired the night before and had not had time to rest properly. He slept soundly and chewed a sandwich in his sleep. And the mayor of the city, Sir William, was very angry. He did not know how to light the street lamps. And then Susie had a good idea. She ran back to the Komodo cave and led the dragon into the city. Together they went around all the streets; the dragon spewed fire and lit all the lanterns in a row. The people of the city were very happy. Since then, they have completely ceased to be afraid of the dragon. And every year, when the lamplighter Charlie went on vacation, they called Komodo to light the lanterns on the streets of the city.

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 they began to use kerosene, they significantly increased the brightness of lighting, 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