Brilliant: The Evolution of Artificial Light

Our lives as we know it have never been dark.  Working into the late evening hours, navigating home on the highway, watching late night TV – all of our nighttime activities rely on affordable, abundant light.  But only two or three centuries ago, such a phenomenon as 24/7 light did not exist outside of expensive candelabras in only the most expensive homes.  In Brilliant: The Evolution of Artificial Light, Jane Brox examines our (relatively short) relationship with light, the social history of technology, and the challenges in bringing electrification to all over the past 200 years.  As Brox herself says, “The democratic distribution of light in the United States depended upon the decades-long struggle by rural Americans to have the same access to electricity as those in the cities and suburbs.”  Brilliant is not a technical and diagram-heavy tome, but rather focuses on the effects that artificial and electrical lighting has had on the progress of society and the individual.

This is a light and topical book, but where Brox veers off-course is her over-emphasis on the electric light in the U.S.  A better subtitle of her book would draw such a distinction, since, after her discussion of Edison’s light bulb, the further electrification of the United States is the only substantive topic.  While the struggle of 20th century rural Americans to gain the same level of access to electricity as those in the cities and suburbs is an interesting topic, is it only rural Americans who fought for access, or did other industrialized nations have the same issue?  Did the popular adoption of the light bulb in everyday life make headway in other countries at the same time as in the United States?  What is the status of electrification in developing economies now, and is that a potential factor holding them back?  Besides these unanswered questions I had, this book is a tad rambling.  She covers everything from the 1960s New York blackouts to the discovery of the Lascaux Paleolithic cave paintings and Jimmy Carter’s non-electrified childhood in Georgia.  While I understand Brox is trying to be pithy and interesting, this book – for me – did not live up to its promise as an “evolution” of artificial light, even though an evolution of this subject would most likely become unwieldy in its complete form.  (However, to be fair, the author tackles more of the social impact of the light revolution as opposed to the specific technical details of how light and electricity is created, which makes this book a lot less dry than it could have been!)

Nonetheless, this book serves its purpose of educating the reader on electrification topics and its history, albeit superficially.  Brilliant does serve as an introduction to discovering other more scholarly works like Thomas Parke Hughes’ Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880-1930 or David Nye’s Electrifying America: Social Meanings of a New Technology, 1880-1940 for a reader more interested in the effect and importance of the electrification of the globe.

*6/10*