by Jane Brox
"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 Giant 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 Yor
k 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.
"As usual New Yorkers": Rosenthal, "The Plugged-in Society," p. 12.
[>] "The more efficient": Wolfgang Schivelbush, quoted in David E.
Nye, Technology Matters: Questions to Live With (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007), p. 163.
"It was a beautiful": Quoted in Paul L. Montgomery, "The Stricken City," in The Night the Lights Went Out, pp. 37–38.
241 "We still knew nothing": "The Talk of the Town," November 20, 1965, p. 44.
"as if the darkness": Ibid., p. 43.
"the men, working without": Montgomery, "The Stricken City," p. 44.
"Two matches, carefully tended": "The Talk of the Town," November 20, 1965, p. 45.
[>] "The moonlight lay": Ibid., p. 46.
[>] "The turbine generators": William E. Farrell, "The Morning After," in The Night the Lights Went Out, p. 66.
"Unfortunately many": Gordon D. Friedlander, "The Northeast Power Failure—a Blanket of Darkness," IEEE Spectrum, February 1966, p. 66.
[>] "As power became available": Report to the President by the Federal Power Commission on the Power Failure in the Northeastern United States and the Province of Ontario on November 9–10, 1965, December 6, 1965, p. 29, http://www.blackout.gmu.edu/archive/pdf/fpc_65.pdf. "New York Cancelled": Bernard Weinraub, "From Abroad: Smiles, Sneers, and Disbelief," in The Night the Lights Went Out, p. 119.
"Ralph Morse, who had": George P. Hunt, "Trapped in a Skyscraper," Life, November 19, 1965, p. 3.
[>] "Everybody recognizes everybody": Farrell, "The Morning After," p. 65.
The subsequent Federal Power: Report to the President, pp. 43–45.