Cracked BuckeyeCracked Buckeye

Ohio inventions and firsts · First · 1879

First electric arc street lighting system

On April 29, 1879 Charles F. Brush lit Cleveland's Public Square with twelve arc lamps on towers; accounts call it the first outdoor public space in America fully lit electrically. Brush systems were in major cities by 1881.

At a glance

Year
1879
By
Charles F. Brush
Company
Brush Electric Company
Place
Cleveland (Public Square), Cuyahoga County ZIP 44114 · Cleveland · Cuyahoga County

The story

Before electricity, cities lit their streets with gas lamps, which were dim, costly and hard to keep running. The arc lamp, which makes light from a spark jumping between two carbon rods, was far brighter, but it needed a steady supply of power.

Charles F. Brush, born in Euclid, Ohio in 1849, worked on both halves of the problem. In 1876 he got the backing of a Cleveland firm to build a dynamo, the generator that would feed arc lights, and he improved the generators and lamps to be more efficient and easier to maintain than European ones.

On the evening of April 29, 1879, Brush lit Cleveland's Public Square with arc lamps. Wikipedia's Public Square page calls it the first street in the world lit with electric street lights, an older claim says first in America; earlier European arc lighting, such as in Paris, makes the world claim uncertain.

By 1881 Brush systems lit New York, Boston and Philadelphia. San Francisco's system became notable as a case of a utility selling electricity from a central plant to many customers through lines. Brush later built a wind turbine at his Cleveland mansion, and won the Rumford Prize (1899) and the Edison Medal (1913).

Timeline

  • 1876: Brush gets Cleveland backing to design his dynamo for powering arc lights. (Cleveland, OH) source
  • 1879-04-29: Public Square in Cleveland is lit by Brush arc lamps. (Cleveland, OH) source
  • 1881: Brush arc lighting systems are in major cities including New York, Boston and Philadelphia. (United States) source
  • 1888: Brush builds an automatically operated wind turbine at his Cleveland mansion. (Cleveland, OH) source
  • 1899: Brush wins the Rumford Prize. source
  • 1913: Brush receives the Edison Medal. source
  • 1929: Brush dies. (Cleveland, OH) source

What it changed

  • Brush systems were in New York, Boston and Philadelphia by 1881.
  • The San Francisco system became a model of a utility selling power to many customers from a central plant.
  • A high school in Ohio bears his name and calls its teams the Arcs.

Why it matters

Launched electrical lighting of cities; Brush Electric merged to form General Electric.

Places in Ohio to see

Further reading

Sources

Confidence. Medium: the main facts were confirmed, but some details (often an address or ZIP code) were not.