History

Public lighting in Dublin City has a long history. The first mention of Public Lighting in Dublin came in 1616 when Dublin Corporation ordered that every fifth house should have a ‘lantern and candlelight set forth from six o’clock to nine o’clock every dark night from Hallowtide until after Christmas’.

Early Public Lighting; By candle & Oil

In 1697 Public Lighting by contract arrived when Michael Cole, Merchant was appointed contractor. He was tasked with placing lights on both sides of main thoroughfares eight houses apart and on byways staggered lights six houses apart. They were to burn from six until midnight between 29th September and 25th March each year. To cover the cost of this he was authorised to make a charge of three shillings per annum on each householder. The lighting system was not satisfactory as a whole and led to many complaints. Nevertheless, despite the complaints, the tax and regime continued unchanged until the early years of the 19th Century.

Gas Lighting

In 1825 Public Lighting by gas was introduced. These lamps had a free burning flame and the source of supply was given off by burning coal. A number of gas companies participated until they were amalgamated in1686.

A dramatic step forward in public lighting came with the introduction of the Gas Mantle in 1867. This greatly improved the luminosity of the flame. The mantle was a fabric impregnated with a mixture of thorium and cerium salts that were fitted over the flame. The temperature was then raised to that of white heat that produced a light of much higher brightness.

Dublin was a small city in the nineteen hundreds. It was bounded by the Royal Canal on the north side and the Grand Canal on the south side. Outside this area there the townships of Drumcondra, Glasnevin, Rathmines and Pembroke.

Dublin Corporation, as it was known, employed 25 lamplighters to light up and quench the 3,750 gas lamps in the city every day. Each lamplighter traversed his route at dusk to light the lamps and at dawn to switch off the lamps. The lamp was lit by pushing a lighted torch attached to the end of a pole into the gas lantern. An attachment on the pole turned on the tap inside the lantern and the torch ignited the gas.

Electric Lighting by Arc Lamp

The era of the electric light became a reality with the invention of the electric dynamo by Michael Faraday. A new generating station was opened by Dublin Corporation in 1892 that was designed to supply 81 electric arc lamps to light the main streets in the capital. This station was capable of delivering 0.9 megawatts.

The arc lamp consisted of two rods of carbon connected by a source of electricity. When the rods are brought together and then separated to form a gap of a few millimetres a very bright light is produced. Whilst the arc emits a bit of light it is the carbon rods that are brought to incandescence that emits the vast majority of it.

In July 1903 the Corporation opened a new station at Pidgeon House Fort generating 3 megawatts.

Incandescent Filament Lamps

With the invention of the dynamo the development of the filament lamp was accelerated. It was known in the middle to late nineteen hundreds that the passage of current through a small wire could make it glow. The only problem was that, whilst very bright, its life was very short. This problem, of short life/burn out, was overcome in the 1870’s by having the filament placed in an evacuated tube. The filament light bulb is the one you regularly see in households even today. Two famous names working independently of each other invented the evacuated tube – Thomas Edison & Joseph Swan.

Gas Discharge Lamps

In the 1930s Gas discharge lamps became available and superseded the incandescent lamps for public lighting. Unlike the incandescent lamp which produces light by heating a filament the light from a gas discharge lamp is emitted by the excitation of a gas or metal vapour in a discharge tube. The colour of the light is characteristic of the gas or vapour in the tube, e.g. amber from low pressure sodium etc.

Although there were problems in the early years with Gas Discharge lamps these were overcome and by 1960 all road lighting schemes were designed using mercury and sodium lamps by the Corporation.

Over the years gas discharge lamps improved in terms of life and light output and this technology has become the light source of choice for street lighting right up to today.

LED’s

The start of the century saw the development of a new light source using light emitting diodes (LEDs). LEDs are currently being installed around the city. This white light source is energy efficient and has a number of other distinct benefits when compared with gas discharge lamps; colour rendering at night is excellent, light output is very good, better light control, long life expectancy and less maintenance

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