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On April 24, 1877, Charles Brush, was issued a patent for the arc light. The competitor to the incandescent light, it battled for primacy well into the early twentieth century.
Humphrey Davy had invented the arc light in the first years of the nineteenth century. Never before had man lighted the darkness with electricity.
But the harsh brilliant arc of light, across a four-inch gap, used a lot of power. Batteries, the sole source of power then, quickly ran down.
By mid-century, the race was on to devise an efficient dynamo - an electric generator - to power the arc for longer periods. Brush perfected a design by Zenobe Gramme. Zen for short, he comes up again in this column, below.
Brush illuminated Cleveland s public square on April 29,1879 with his dynamo and arc lights. Soon, every major city wanted the system for exterior areas.
When Brush turned the system on in Wabash, Indiana, the streets became lit by a "strange weird light, exceeded in power only by the sun... The people, almost with bated breath, stood...