Brilliant

by Jane Brox

  [>] "Lamp trimming only reaches": Hough, "The Lamp of the Eskimo," p. 1034.

  "The Eskimo have": Walter Hough, "The Origin and Range of the Eskimo Lamp," American Anthropologist 11, no. 4 (April 1898): 117.

  "unlike our lighting systems": Walter Benjamin, "The Lamp," in Selected Writings, vol. 2, 1927–1934, ed. Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland, and Gary Smith, trans. Rodney Livingstone and others (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 692.

  CHAPTER 11: GLEAMING THINGS

  [>] "In days of old": Edward Hungerford, "Night Glow of the City," Harper's Weekly, April 30, 1910, p. 13.

  [>] "when it was found": "Fines the Edison Co. for Smoke Nuisance," New York Times, January 17, 1911, p. 7.

  [>] "Electrical articles": Quoted in Ronald C. Tobey, Technology as Freedom: The New Deal and the Electrical Modernization of the American Home (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), p. 30.

  "It was a Dover iron": Quoted in Earl Lifshey, The Housewares Story: A History of the American Housewares Industry (Chicago: National Housewares Manufacturers Association, 1973), p. 231.

  "so-called instruction": Christine Frederick, Selling Mrs. Consumer (New York: Business Bourse, 1929), p. 186.

  [>] "Fancy cooking cutlets": Maud Lancaster, Electric Cooking, Heating, Cleaning, Etc.: Being a Manual of Electricity in the Service of the Home, ed. E. W. Lancaster (London: Constable, 1914), frontispiece.

  "There is no household": A. E. Kennelly, "Electricity in the Household," in Electricity in Daily Life: A Popular Account of the Applications of Electricity to Every Day Uses (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1891), p. 252.

  "A traveler will find": "Electricity in the Household," Scientific American, March 19, 1904, p. 232.

  "can be very delicately": Ibid.

  "Even an invalid": Ibid.

  [>] "went after every kind": Harold Platt, interview, "Program Two: Electric Nation," in Great Projects: The Building of America, http://www.pbs.org/greatprojects/interviews/platt_i.html (accessed April 7, 2009).

  [>] "A tin can": Frederick, Selling Mrs. Consumer, p. 157.

  168 "electricity, the unseen": Hungerford, "Night Glow of the City," p. 14.

  "Woman has been": Mary Pattison, "The Abolition of Household Slavery," in Giant Power: Large Scale Electrical Development as a Social Factor, ed. Morris Llewellyn Cooke (Philadelphia: American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1925), p. 124.

  "They have let go": H. R. Kelso, House Furnishing Review, July 1919, quoted in Lifshey, The Housewares Story, p. 289.

  [>] "As a matter of fact": Ladies' Home Journal, quoted in Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, For Her Own Good: 150 Years of the Experts' Advice to Women (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press, 1978), p. 135.

  "We can see and feel": Frederick W Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management, 1911, Modern History SourceBook, http//www.fordham.edu/HALSALL/MOD/1911taylor.html (accessed March 26, 2006).

  "The cry of the home": Pattison, "The Abolition of Household Slavery," pp. 126–27.

  [>] "Because we housewives": Ladies' Home Journal, quoted in Ehrenreich and English, For Her Own Good, p. 162.

  [>] "Rise from bed": F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (New York: Scribner, 2004), p. 173.

  "When the gas": Brian Bowers, Lengthening the Day: A History of Lighting Technology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 132.

  "In the parlor": Kennelly, "Electricity in the Household," p. 246.

  "When they say": E. B. White, "Sabbath Morn," in One Man's Meat, enl. ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1944), p. 51.

  [>] "Walk around the outside": Charles Frederick Weller, Neglected Neighbors: Stories of Life in the Alleys, Tenements and Shanties of the National Capital (Philadelphia: John C. Winston, 1909), pp. 10–11.

  [>] "The whites generally occupied": David Hajdu, Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn (New York: North Point Press, 2000), p. 7.

  "ironing beside": Weller, Neglected Neighbors, pp. 17–19.

  "the perspiring woman": Ibid., pp 82–83.

  [>] "each day was a scuffle": Ethel Waters, with Charles Samuels, His Eye Is on the Sparrow: An Autobiography (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1951), p. 46.

  "The prettiest sight": Ibid., pp. 18–19.

  CHAPTER 12: ALONE IN THE DARK

  [>] "They are pronounced": James Agee and Walker Evans, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: Three Tenant Families (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1988), pp. 265–66.

  [>] "will be a highly skilled": Quoted in Clark C. Spence, "Early Uses of Electricity in American Agriculture," Technology and Culture 3, no. 2 (Spring 1962): 150.

  "not improbably": Country Gentleman, quoted ibid., p. 144.

  [>] "There was no quittin'": Quoted in Mary Ellen Romeo, Darkness to Daylight: An Oral History of Rural Electrification in Pennsylvania and New Jersey (Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Rural Electric Association, 1986), p. 13.

  [>] "You could milk a cow": Quoted ibid., pp. 18–19.

  "Winter mornings": Quoted in Robert A. Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982), p. 503.

  [>] "I would have to get": Quoted ibid., p. 505.

  "You see how round": Quoted ibid.

  "I have always lived": Quoted in Katherine Jellison, Entitled to Power: Farm Women and Technology, 1913–1963 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), p. 14.

  "I got up many": Quoted in Romeo, Darkness to Daylight, p. 12.

  "By the time": Quoted in Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson, p. 509.

  [>] "Our artificial light": Jimmy Carter, An Hour Before Daylight: Memories of a Rural Boyhood (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), p. 31.

  "You know, you couldn't": Quoted in Romeo, Darkness to Daylight, p. 19.

  [>] "this jazz-industrial age": M. L. Wilson, quoted in Russell Lord, "The Rebirth of Rural Life, Part 2," Survey Graphic 30, no. 12 (December 1941), http://newdeal.feri.org/survey/sg41687.htm (accessed March 12, 2006).

  "This is the test": David E. Nye, Image Worlds: Corporate Identities at General Electric, 1890–1930 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985), photo, insert after p. 134.

  [>] "The thing [the farm woman] needs": Quoted in Jellison, Entitled to Power, p. 13.

  "We would like": Quoted ibid., p. 67.

  "everything had already": Quoted in Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson, p. 512.

  "the kind of oil": William T. O'Dea, The Social History of Lighting (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958), p. 56.

  "Kerosene light": Agee and Evans, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, p. 211.

  183 "A blown-out electric bulb": Ibid., pp. 437–38.

  "street lighting in the United States": David E. Nye, Electrifying America: Social Meanings of a New Technology, 1880–1940 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), p. 140.

  [>] "provide a link": Quoted in Jonathan Coopersmith, The Electrification of Russia, 1880–1926 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992), p. 154.

  "displayed an illuminated map": Ibid., p. 1.

  "Ten years ago": Harold Evans, "The World's Experience with Rural Electrification," in Giant Power: Large Scale Electrical Development as a Social Factor, ed. Morris Llewellyn Cooke (Philadelphia: Academy of Political and Social Science, 1925), p. 33.

  [>] "the kw.h. production": Ibid., p. 36.

  "far off above Manhattan": "Edison Is Buried on 52d Anniversary of Electric Light," New York Times, October 22, 1931, p. 1.

  [>] "Mr. Hoover left it": "Nation to Be Dark One Minute Tonight After Edison Burial," New York Times, October 21, 1931, p. 1.

  CHAPTER 13: RURAL ELECTRIFICATION

  [>] "It is more important": Report of the Country Life Commission: Report and Special Message from the President of the United States, 60th Cong., 2d sess., Senate Document 705 (Spokane, WA: Chamber of Commerce, 1911), pp. 30–31, Core Historical Literature of Agriculture, http://chla.library.cornell.edu (accessed February 15, 2008).

  "drive a wedge": Martha Bensley Bruère, "What Is Giant Power For?" in Gi
ant Power: Large Scale Electrical Development as a Social Factor, ed. Morris Llewellyn Cooke (Philadelphia: American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1925), p. 120.

  [>] "When the first-of-the-month": Franklin Delano Roosevelt, quoted in Jackie Kennedy, "Seeds for America's Rural Electricity Sprouted in Diverse Power Service Territory," http://www.diversepower.com/history_heritage.php (accessed February 14, 2008).

  189 "Power is really": Press conference, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Warm Springs, GA, November 23, 1934, http://georgiainfo.galileo.usg.edu/FDRspeeches/FDRspeech34-2.htm (accessed July 9, 2009).

  [>] "Now the Alcorn County": Ibid.

  "There must have been": David E. Lilienthal, The Journals of David E. Lilienthal, vol. 1, The TVA Years, 1939–1945 (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), p. 52.

  [>] "full even without": Eleanor Buckles, Valley of Power (New York: Creative Age Press, 1945), p. 18.

  "And since there wasn't": Quoted in Michael J. McDonald and John Muldowny, TVA and the Dispossessed: The Resettlement of Population in the Norris Dam Area (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1982), p. 40.

  [>] "I guess they felt": John Rice Irwin, quoted ibid., p. 57.

  "And the people": Ibid.

  [>] "From all this": Cranston Clayton, "The TVA and the Race Problem," Opportunity: Journal of Negro Life 12, no. 4 (April 1934): 111, http://newdeal.feri.org/search_details.cfm?link=http://newdeal.feri.org/opp/opp34111.htm (accessed March 12, 2006).

  [>] "A malaria-ridden": Buckles, Valley of Power, p. 123.

  "We were all": John Carmody, quoted in Dr. Tom Venables, "The Early Days: A Visit with John M. Carmody," Rural Electrification 19, no. 1 (October 1960): 20.

  [>] "Initially ... the REA": Katherine Jellison, Entitled to Power: Farm Women and Technology, 1913–1963 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), p. 98.

  "Construction crews ... have dug": Rural Electrification on the March (Washington, DC: Rural Electrification Administration, July 1938), p. 7.

  "An Indiana woman": Richard A. Pence, ed., The Next Greatest Thing: 50 Years of Rural Electrification in America (Washington, DC: National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, 1984), p. 95.

  [>] "In Virginia, a co-op": Ibid., p. 88.

  [>] "I had gotten": Quoted in Mary Ellen Romeo, Darkness to Daylight: An Oral History of Rural Electrification in Pennsylvania and New Jersey (Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Rural Electric Association, 1986), p. 61.

  "We had a large": Jimmy Carter, An Hour Before Daylight: Memories of a Rural Boyhood (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), p. 32.

  "The day we got": Quoted in Rural Lines—USA: The Story of Cooperative Rural Electrification, rev. ed. (N.p.: U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1981), p. 14.

  200 "They report that": Quoted in Romeo, Darkness to Daylight, p. 68.

  "I think the best day": Jimmy Carter, quoted in Rural Lines—USA, p. 12.

  "We felt like": Quoted in Romeo, Darkness to Daylight, p. 100.

  "Electricity changed the country": Quoted ibid.

  [>] "was wonderful": Quoted ibid., p. 55.

  "I'll never forget": Quoted ibid.

  For those in cities: Edward Hopper's painting is titled Nighthawks (1942).

  "That light in the kitchen": Quoted in Romeo, Darkness to Daylight, pp. 55–56.

  "Some of them wanted": Quoted ibid., p. 58.

  [>] "I've seen this happen": Quoted ibid., p. 56.

  "Buried here May 3": Photo, ibid., p. 59.

  "What is electricity": Hurst Mauldin and William A. Cochran Jr., Electricity for the Farm (N.p.: Alabama Power Company, 1960), p. 1.

  [>] "All this pushbutton stuff": Quoted in McDonald and Muldowny,

  TVA and the Dispossessed, p. 30.

  "To a farm girl": Quoted in Jellison, Entitled to Power, p. 149.

  "I would never": Quoted in Rural Electrification on the March, p. 70.

  The advancing electric lines: John Bisbee, conversation with the author, August 2008.

  CHAPTER 14: COLD LIGHT

  [>] "Practically every illuminant": E. Newton Harvey, "Cold Light," Scientific Monthly, March 1931, p. 270.

  "Today we are producing": Charles Steinmetz, quoted in "Scientists Racing to Find Cold Light," New York Times, April 24, 1922, p. 5.

  "A 60-watt bulb": Paul W. Keating, Lamps for a Brighter America: A History of the General Electric Lamp Business (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1954) p. 5.

  [>] "What a preposterous": "Nikola Tesla and His Work," New York Times, September 30, 1894, p. 20.

  "Here you have": Harvey, "Cold Light," p. 272.

  207 "At sunset the firefly": Walter Hough, Fire as an Agent in Human Culture, bulletin no. 139, Smithsonian Institution (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1926), pp. 197–98.

  [>] "There were at first": Quoted ibid., p. 196.

  "I think it is possible": Steinmetz, quoted in "Scientists Racing to Find Cold Light," p. 5.

  [>] "The road to Tomorrow": E. B. White, "The World of Tomorrow," in Essays of E. B. White (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), p. 111.

  "Only selected parts": Hugh O'Connor, "Science at the World's Fair—Rise of the Illuminating Engineer," New York Times, June 11, 1939, p. D4.

  "As night fell": Helen A. Harrison, "The Fair Perceived: Color and Light as Elements in Design and Planning," in Dawn of a New Day: The New York World's Fair, 1939/40 (New York: New York University Press, 1980), p. 46.

  "bore an uncanny resemblance": Ibid.

  "Even the drabbest": Ibid., pp. 46–47.

  [>] "It's easy to see": Keating, Lamps for a Brighter America, photo, insert after p. 184.

  CHAPTER 15: WARTIME: THE RETURN OF OLD NIGHT

  [>] "The earth grew spangled": Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Night Flight, trans. Stuart Gilbert (New York: Century, 1932), p. 8.

  [>] "Experience has shown": Quoted in Williamson Murray, War in the Air, 1914–1945 (London: Cassell, 1999), pp. 69–70.

  [>] Those in the steel industry: Terence H. O'Brien, Civil Defense (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office and Longmans, Green, 1955), p. 229n.

  [>] Without streetlights: Ibid., p. 322.

  [>] "From different angles": Vera Brittain, England's Hour (New York: Macmillan, 1941), pp. 213–14.

  [>] October 15 saw: Angus Calder, The People's War: Britain, 1939–45 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1969), p. 168.

  "Whatever part of London": Brittain, England's Hour, p. 121.

  "the clatter of little": Calder, The People's War, p. 170.

  "Yet another raider": Graham Greene, The Ministry of Fear, in 3 by Graham Greene (New York: Viking Press, 1948), p. 19.

  "Over the night": Brittain, England's Hour, p. 113.

  "[They] had taken over": Henry Moore and John Hedgecoe, Henry Moore: My Ideas, Inspiration and Life as an Artist (London: Collins & Brown, 1999), p. 170.

  222 "And amid the grim": Ibid.

  "a pure and curious": Elizabeth Bowen, quoted in Calder, The People's War, p. 173.

  "What surrounded us": Hans Erich Nossack, The End: Hamburg, 1943, trans. Joel Agee (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), PP. 37–38

  [>] "There is said": "Mission Develops U.S. Civil Defense," New York Times, February 14, 1941, p. 6.

  [>] "Get off the streets": "Fog Blanket Aids in Blackout Test of All Manhattan," New York Times, May 23, 1942, p. 1.

  "The crowds melted into,": Ibid., pp. 1–2.

  [>] "As the lights came on": Ibid., p. 2.

  "For every undraped window": "London Lights Up Somewhat Hesitantly; War Habits Persist After End of Blackout," New York Times, April 24, 1945, p. 19.

  "The few householders": Ibid.

  CHAPTER 16: LASCAUX DISCOVERED

  [>] "I made myself": Marcel Ravidat, quoted in Mario Ruspoli, The Cave of Lascaux: The Final Photographs (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1987), p. 188.

  [>] "We raised the lamp": Ibid.

  "Like a trail": Ibid., p. 189.

  Scientists and archaeologists: The names of the chambers of the Lascaux Cave and the
figures in them are from Norbert Aujoulat, Lascaux: Movement, Space, and Time, trans. Martin Street (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2005), p. 30.

  [>] "in a prairie": Ibid., p. 191.

  "The lights were never": Ruspoli, The Cave of Lascaux, pp. 180, 182, 183.

  PART IV

  [>] "Science tells us": Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1962), p. 193.

  "Nothing, storm or flood": Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (New York: Random House, 1995), p. 7.

  CHAPTER 17: BLACKOUT, 1965

  [>] "...we have built": Robinson Jeffers, "The Purse-Seine," in Rock and Hawk: A Selection of Shorter Poems, ed. Robert Hass (New York: Random House, 1987), p. 191.

  By 1960, on the twenty-fifth: Statistics on Rural Electrification are from The Rural Electric Fact Book (Washington, DC: National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, 1960), pp. 3, 56.

  [>] "It is scarcely": R. R. Bowker, ed., "Electricity," no. 12 in The Great American Industries series, Harper's, October 1896, p. 728.

  "In times of normal": Paul L. Montgomery, "And Everything Was Gone," in The Night the Lights Went Out, ed. A. M. Rosenthal (New York: New American Library, 1965), p. 19.

  [>] "A slight variation": John Noble Wilford and Richard F. Shepard, "Detective Story," in The Night the Lights Went Out, p. 84.

  "is like a game": Matthew L. Wald, Richard Pérez-Peña, and Neela Banerjee, "The Blackout: What Went Wrong; Experts Asking Why Problems Spread So Far," New York Times, August 16, 2003, http://www.nytimes.com (accessed May 3, 2007).

  [>] "Because the relay": Wilford and Shepard, "Detective Story," p. 86.

  [>] "In the New York State system": Donald Johnston, "The Grid," in The Night the Lights Went Out, p. 75.

  [>] "I don't know why": Quoted in Montgomery, "And Everything Was Gone," p. 23.

  "'The Chinese'": A. M. Rosenthal, "The Plugged-in Society," in The Night the Lights Went Out, p. 11.

  "through the minds": Ibid., p. 14.

  [>] "I could see": Quoted in Montgomery, "And Everything Was Gone," p. 20.

  "like hamsters": Quoted ibid., p. 24.

  "glided down more": "The Talk of the Town: Notes and Comment," The New Yorker, November 20, 1965, p. 45.