IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2019 - 15

town might have had a lot of towers -
Mark Twain's Hannibal, MO, had
98 of them in 1883. They had their
detractors. In a city with tall buildings
some streets were cast into shadow.
However, in small cities, like Hannibal, they proved useful. Nye traces
the decline of the towers to political
and economic pressures: he says
that by 1915 cities had developed a
hierarchy of illumination that favored
the downtown, which was crowded
with corporate advertising and skyscrapers. Second place was given to
monuments (think of the Statue of
Liberty) and public buildings (like railroad stations), then came small businesses and fashionable residences.
Finally, there came poor neighborhoods, which city governments felt
disinclined to illuminate. The trouble
with tower lighting was that it didn't
discriminate and had a tendency to
shed light uniformly and present a
pleasant effect redolent of moonlight.
One of Nye's strengths is that he
is a historian grounded in literature.
He points out that the flâneur much
beloved by Charles Baudelaire and
Walter Benjamin - a silent solitary
observer of the urban scene - was
aided and abetted by urban lighting. His hours of looking had been
vastly expanded.
Nye devotes a chapter to the
City Beautiful Movement, a political
manifestation of the "Progressive
Era," of the late 19th and early 20th
century, which sought to improve
the living conditions of the poor -
many of them immigrants, often
living in crowded slums - and to
make their rapidly growing neighborhoods objects of beauty. Among
the proponents of this movement
were such people as Daniel Burnham and Frederick Law Olmsted the
renowned landscape architect who
designed New York's Central Park.
These reformers often presented

JUNE 2019

their ideas for the ideal beautiful
gang Schivelbusch, which appeared
city at world's fairs, e.g., the Chicain 1988. The author is a German
go World's Columbian exposition of
scholar of cultural studies who cov1893, planned by Burnham, which
ers much the same era as Nye but
popularized the concept of the
confines himself largely to Europe.
"white city." A city, these reformers
Students of the subject should read
argued, should have abundant lightboth books - they are both valuing and it should be planned. Public
able. Neither is strong on the technibuildings should be illuminated at
cal aspects of their subject - you'll
night, adding to their grandeur and
have to look elsewhere to find out
how a neon sign works. In his introcontributing to the sense of patrioduction, Nye contrasts his work with
tism of the urban dwellers, many
that of Schivelbusch, arguing that
of them recent immigrants. Major
city thoroughfares should
have uniform white ways like
those in the fairs.
For the City Beautiful
people, f lashing and illuEvery major technological
minated billboards, which
were coming into fashion,
innovation has social meaning.
were anathema. But this was
a losing battle. As Nye puts
the latter's is dated: "Schivelbusch
it: "In everyday life, each business
asserted that the centralization of
wanted to advertise itself and stand
energy systems promoted the cenout... they embraced the aesthetics
tralization of business. More recent
of Times Square." Eventually a comwork has found that the availability
promise was reached between the
of electrical power had the opposite
City Beautiful people and the indieffect...." The reader should read
vidual forces of commerce. This led
these books as well as Nye's Electrito national symbols being bathed
fying America to see who is more
in white light (e.g., the Washington
persuasive here, but I came down
Monument) as well as iconic objects
on the side of Nye.
like the Brooklyn Bridge. Says Nye,
Other major texts in the field that
"The urban landscape that resulted
will be of interest are City Lights,
was a hybrid form, neither the stately
Illuminating the American Night, by
horizontal city of the great exposiJohn A Jakle (Johns Hopkins, 2001),
tions nor the visual cacophony of
and the prize winning Networks of
Times Square." The construction of
Power: Electrification in Western
the Citgo sign in 1940 was nearly a
Society 1880-1930, by Thomas
generation after the City Beautiful
P. Hughes (Johns Hopkins, 1983).
movement's heyday. Coming as it did
at the end of the Great Depression it
Reviewer Information
may have been embraced, or perhaps
A.David Wunsch is Book Review Editolerated, as a symbol of a strengthentor of this magazine. He is Profesing corporate economy.
sor Emeritus in the Electrical and
Nye's is not the first history of
Computer Engineering Department
urban lighting. A respected and
at the University of Massachusetts
earlier work is Disenchanted Night:
Lowell. Email: A_Wunsch@uml.edu.
The Industrialization of Light in
the Nineteenth Century by Wolf-

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IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2019

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