6 ms·

The Historical Cost of Light

53 points by gok 6y ago

klagermkii 6y ago
Did it take 50-60 hours in ancient times to gather enough firewood to burn a fire for an hour, or does this limit the definition of artificial light to some kind of higher quality oil lamp?
- User23 6y ago
  > Did it take 50-60 hours in ancient times to gather enough firewood to burn a fire for an hour No
  - gxqoz 6y ago
    I'm only a couple of chapters in, but there's an interesting new book on wood throughout history: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Age-of-Wood/Roland-Ennos/9781982114732 https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Age-of-Wood/Rolan... Among the arguments is that wood was far more important to humanity until about the 19th century than any other resource that gets its own age (i.e. stone, bronze, iron). There's some evolutionary biology stuff in it that I find a bit far-fetched, but at least is an original take on things. If you'd rather just read a review, this one is pretty good: https://newrepublic.com/article/160298/age-wood-roland-ennos-book-review-trees-human?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=tnr_daily https://newrepublic.com/article/160298/age-wood-roland-ennos...
- jml7c5 6y ago
  The site doesn't specify it well, but this is cost for a given level of illumination, not cost for any level of illumination. It takes a lot of firewood to produce the same amount of light as a regular lightbulb. Heck, it takes a lot even compared to an oil lamp. I read "The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power" by Daniel Yergin some time ago. One of the things that struck me was just how much of an effect kerosene lamps had on society. It was the main use for oil in the early days, and indoor lighting went from expensive whale oil (or dirty, still-costly tallow) to cheap, abundant kerosene. It provided hours more leisure time every night in the winter.
- vondur 6y ago
  In the Mediterranean area, olive oil was used for light. Wood was used for heat or cooking.
emeraldd 6y ago
This behaves really badly on mobile. I keep having the begin buttons not show up properly and it's too easy to blow past the text milestones with a flick of the finger. This makes it hard to track what's going on. ...
- k__ 6y ago
  Yes, doesn't work here either.
- yen223 6y ago
  For what it's worth, it works fine on my phone, on Android Chrome
- SilasX 6y ago
  Yeah, on mobile here: the first time it froze for me midway through the 1800s one and refused to scroll anymore.
dilippkumar 6y ago
I’d like to see some references that back up this claim. It doesn’t pass an initial sniff test. Our understanding is that mastering fire was one of the earliest steps of humanity’s climb towards civilization. Even today, hardcore campers spend an hour chopping firewood that’ll sustain a fire overnight. It’s hard to believe that it’s been significantly harder to do this historically. Slightly related: I love this book “In praise of shadows” by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki. He lived through Japan’s rapid modernization period and talks about how much darker everything was before electric lights, and how the darkness and dim firelight created a very different aesthetic that’s lost in the era of bright electric lights.
- jml7c5 6y ago
  It appears this is cost-per-lumen, not just cost-for-any-level-of-illumination. So it makes sense. The bottom of the page has this information: >Method: This project is a visualization of a 1990s paper[0] by William Nordhaus, wherein the economist assessed the amount of illumination that workers could purchase at various times in history. I’d recommend the paper even if you’re not a fan of academic writing; it’s approachable, and Nordhaus is the type of Nobel prize-winning overachiever who goes so far as recreating a Babylonian oil lantern to assess its illumination capacity. [0] https://www.nber.org/system/files/chapters/c6064/c6064.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/chapters/c6064/c6064.pdf
  - smnrchrds 6y ago
    So it's like cost per gigaFLOPS, instead of cost of one unit of computing device, no matter whether it is an Apple II or a Mac Pro.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- bryanlarsen 6y ago
  Wood fires are great for heat, but really crappy for light. It's pretty hard to read by a camp fire. And you're either gathering dead fall or using a sharp steel axe. Dead fall is a limited resource, if you need some every day you'll run out close by soon. So soon you're spending more time traveling for wood than collecting. Eventually you'll have to use a stone axe. IIRC, it takes three days to chop down a tree with stone axes that would take an hour with a steel axe. You'll go through several axes chopping down one tree, so you spend much more time making and sharpening axes than chopping.
rahimiali 6y ago
“Before modern lighting, we used to go to sleep when night arrived, waking briefly for an hour or two in deep into the night before retiring again until the morning.” In case this puzzled you, this is referred to as “segmented sleep”. Here is a synopsis: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4763365/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4763365/
- aaron695 6y ago
  “segmented sleep” is a 100% made up meme. What's more interesting is people, like this article, now speak of it as true. Even though we all sleep, we can go visit places without electricity, and a billion people still live without modern lighting. We chose 'interesting' over logical.
  - peteretep 6y ago
    I feel like an article on the NCBI site needs a little more work to dismiss than simply declaring it a “100% made up meme”?
    - watwut 6y ago
      Like, I go to toilette each night and baby in pre-industrial village will wake up everyone. So it is safe to assume they will generally go piss and drink too and it will look like activity. Rural cabins had while familly in one room so one person needing to go is likely to cause cascade. Perfectly consistent with travelers observations in article and still dumb to call it "first sleep" and "second sleep" as if it would be something special.
      - rahimiali 6y ago
        If your point is that frequently interruptions of sleep is not the same as a sociological phenomenon? I think it is if it happens in every family, every night. It's exactly the kind of pattern that changes habits, cultures, and technology trends. It's worth documenting and giving it a name. If all of a sudden the pattern disappears, that's also worth noting.
sillysaurusx 6y ago
Hello, I’d like to report a bug if the dev is reading: https://imgur.com/a/8juQRMx https://imgur.com/a/8juQRMx The scroll got stuck and became unresponsive. Safari, iOS 14. Eventually I figured out that I could “scroll” by pinch to zoom, but gave up. Figured I should say something. Love the visualization.
malwarebytess 6y ago
Straight up don't believe this. Even the premise of using lumens as a byway to quantifying an hour of light is flimsy. There's no way we have insight into babylonian economics or everyman illumination to know this to the level of certainty espoused here.

53 points by gok 6y ago

Did it take 50-60 hours in ancient times to gather enough firewood to burn a fire for an hour, or does this limit the definition of artificial light to some kind of higher quality oil lamp?

User23 6y ago
> Did it take 50-60 hours in ancient times to gather enough firewood to burn a fire for an hour No
- gxqoz 6y ago
  I'm only a couple of chapters in, but there's an interesting new book on wood throughout history: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Age-of-Wood/Roland-Ennos/9781982114732 https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Age-of-Wood/Rolan... Among the arguments is that wood was far more important to humanity until about the 19th century than any other resource that gets its own age (i.e. stone, bronze, iron). There's some evolutionary biology stuff in it that I find a bit far-fetched, but at least is an original take on things. If you'd rather just read a review, this one is pretty good: https://newrepublic.com/article/160298/age-wood-roland-ennos-book-review-trees-human?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=tnr_daily https://newrepublic.com/article/160298/age-wood-roland-ennos...
jml7c5 6y ago
The site doesn't specify it well, but this is cost for a given level of illumination, not cost for any level of illumination. It takes a lot of firewood to produce the same amount of light as a regular lightbulb. Heck, it takes a lot even compared to an oil lamp. I read "The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power" by Daniel Yergin some time ago. One of the things that struck me was just how much of an effect kerosene lamps had on society. It was the main use for oil in the early days, and indoor lighting went from expensive whale oil (or dirty, still-costly tallow) to cheap, abundant kerosene. It provided hours more leisure time every night in the winter.
vondur 6y ago
In the Mediterranean area, olive oil was used for light. Wood was used for heat or cooking.

emeraldd 6y ago

This behaves really badly on mobile. I keep having the begin buttons not show up properly and it's too easy to blow past the text milestones with a flick of the finger. This makes it hard to track what's going on. ...

k__ 6y ago
Yes, doesn't work here either.
yen223 6y ago
For what it's worth, it works fine on my phone, on Android Chrome
SilasX 6y ago
Yeah, on mobile here: the first time it froze for me midway through the 1800s one and refused to scroll anymore.

dilippkumar 6y ago

I’d like to see some references that back up this claim. It doesn’t pass an initial sniff test. Our understanding is that mastering fire was one of the earliest steps of humanity’s climb towards civilization. Even today, hardcore campers spend an hour chopping firewood that’ll sustain a fire overnight. It’s hard to believe that it’s been significantly harder to do this historically. Slightly related: I love this book “In praise of shadows” by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki. He lived through Japan’s rapid modernization period and talks about how much darker everything was before electric lights, and how the darkness and dim firelight created a very different aesthetic that’s lost in the era of bright electric lights.

jml7c5 6y ago
It appears this is cost-per-lumen, not just cost-for-any-level-of-illumination. So it makes sense. The bottom of the page has this information: >Method: This project is a visualization of a 1990s paper[0] by William Nordhaus, wherein the economist assessed the amount of illumination that workers could purchase at various times in history. I’d recommend the paper even if you’re not a fan of academic writing; it’s approachable, and Nordhaus is the type of Nobel prize-winning overachiever who goes so far as recreating a Babylonian oil lantern to assess its illumination capacity. [0] https://www.nber.org/system/files/chapters/c6064/c6064.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/chapters/c6064/c6064.pdf
- smnrchrds 6y ago
  So it's like cost per gigaFLOPS, instead of cost of one unit of computing device, no matter whether it is an Apple II or a Mac Pro.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
bryanlarsen 6y ago
Wood fires are great for heat, but really crappy for light. It's pretty hard to read by a camp fire. And you're either gathering dead fall or using a sharp steel axe. Dead fall is a limited resource, if you need some every day you'll run out close by soon. So soon you're spending more time traveling for wood than collecting. Eventually you'll have to use a stone axe. IIRC, it takes three days to chop down a tree with stone axes that would take an hour with a steel axe. You'll go through several axes chopping down one tree, so you spend much more time making and sharpening axes than chopping.

rahimiali 6y ago

“Before modern lighting, we used to go to sleep when night arrived, waking briefly for an hour or two in deep into the night before retiring again until the morning.” In case this puzzled you, this is referred to as “segmented sleep”. Here is a synopsis: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4763365/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4763365/

aaron695 6y ago
“segmented sleep” is a 100% made up meme. What's more interesting is people, like this article, now speak of it as true. Even though we all sleep, we can go visit places without electricity, and a billion people still live without modern lighting. We chose 'interesting' over logical.
- peteretep 6y ago
  I feel like an article on the NCBI site needs a little more work to dismiss than simply declaring it a “100% made up meme”?
  - watwut 6y ago
    Like, I go to toilette each night and baby in pre-industrial village will wake up everyone. So it is safe to assume they will generally go piss and drink too and it will look like activity. Rural cabins had while familly in one room so one person needing to go is likely to cause cascade. Perfectly consistent with travelers observations in article and still dumb to call it "first sleep" and "second sleep" as if it would be something special.
    - rahimiali 6y ago
      If your point is that frequently interruptions of sleep is not the same as a sociological phenomenon? I think it is if it happens in every family, every night. It's exactly the kind of pattern that changes habits, cultures, and technology trends. It's worth documenting and giving it a name. If all of a sudden the pattern disappears, that's also worth noting.

sillysaurusx 6y ago

Hello, I’d like to report a bug if the dev is reading: https://imgur.com/a/8juQRMx https://imgur.com/a/8juQRMx The scroll got stuck and became unresponsive. Safari, iOS 14. Eventually I figured out that I could “scroll” by pinch to zoom, but gave up. Figured I should say something. Love the visualization.

malwarebytess 6y ago

Straight up don't believe this. Even the premise of using lumens as a byway to quantifying an hour of light is flimsy. There's no way we have insight into babylonian economics or everyman illumination to know this to the level of certainty espoused here.