Evolution of light

I am fascinated by light. I love being in the hills overlooking a valley in the late evening or early morning, and looking out over the twinkling lights of civilization down below. Those twinkles come from streetlights, headlights, homelights. Many of them represent families, people - so many tens of thousands of stories.

What is really fascinating is to imagine similar scenes in years past. Thinking about the evolution of lighting is pretty fascinating. For millenia, for almost all of the world's history, homes and cities were illuminated by flames. It took a long time to get from open wood-burning fires, to torches, to oil lamps and wax candles. But though these developments added convenience, the amount of light didn't increase much.

It's been a little over 140 years since Thomas Edison patented the first functional incandescent bulb, and the modern "era of light" began. So we compare the millenia that preceded with the tiny slice of less than 140 years of electric light.

In the past decade, other technologies including LED light bulbs have become practical and have practically replaced the old-style filament versions with brighter, cheaper, longer-lasting options. Further developments are in process that will certainly astound us in years to come.

I #GiveThanks for all that I normally take for granted at the flick of a switch that turns night into day, enabling a whole different series of life functions that were not even dreamed of by our ancestors.