ult to visualize the gloom which shrouded the streets a
century ago. As the belated pedestrian walks along the suburban highways
in comparative safety under adequate artificial lighting, he will
realize the great influence of artificial light upon civilization if he
recalls that not more than two centuries ago in London

it was a common practice ... that a hundred or more in a
company, young and old, would make nightly invasions upon
houses of the wealthy to the intent to rob them and that when
night was come no man durst adventure to walk in the streets.

Inhabitants of the cities of the present time are inclined to think that
crime is common on the streets at night, but what would it be without
adequate artificial light? Two centuries ago in a city like London a
smoking grease-lamp, a candle, or a basket of pine knots here and there
afforded the only street-lighting, and these were extinguished by eleven
o'clock. Lawlessness was hatched and hidden by darkness, and even the
lantern or torch served more to mark the victim than to protect him. It
has been said in describing the conditions of the age of dark streets
that everybody signed his will and was prepared for death before he left
his home. By comparison with the present, one is again encouraged to
believe that the world grows better. Doubtless, artificial light
projected into the crannies has had something to do with this change.

Adequate street-lighting is really a product of the twentieth century,
but throughout the nineteenth century progress was steadily made from
the beginning of gas-lighting in 1807. In preceding centuries crude
lighting was employed here and there but not generally by the public
authorities. In the earliest centuries of written history little is said
of street-lighting. In those days man was not so much inclined to
improve upon nature, beyond protecting himself from the elements, and he
lighted the streets more as a festive outburst than as an economic
proposition. Nevertheless, in the early writings occasionally there are
indications that in the centers of advanced civilization some efforts
were made to light the streets.

The old Syrian city of Antioch, which in the fourth century of the
Christian era contained about four hundred thousand inhabitants, appears
to have had lighted streets. Libanius, who lived in the early years of
that century, wrote:

The light of the sun is succeeded by other lights, which ar