From candles to electrons: changing lighting sources in the United Kingdom

Many of us take artificial light for granted. Most of us use it daily: we can read, cook, and do tasks indoors; students can study at night; and our communities and homes are safer when not cloaked in darkness.

It’s not just light that has been transformative, but cheap light. The price of lighting has fallen by more than 99.9% since the 1700s.

Changes in what we use to power lighting have been crucial to the plummeting costs. This chart, based on data from Fouquet and Pearson, shows these changes from 1700 to 2000.

In 1700, the typical British household lit its evenings with candles. In the 18th century, they started using whale oil, and by the 19th century, they saw the rise of burning gas. Kerosene briefly provided a fifth of light around 1900. With each transition, lighting became more efficient, and the costs dropped. But the defining transition has been to electricity. It now provides almost all of the UK’s artificial light.

For hundreds of millions of the world’s poorest, lighting at night is still a luxury, and will remain so until they get access to electricity.

Explore what the cost and distribution of lighting tell us about human development →

Where this page came from

This page was imported from Our World in Data. “From candles to electrons: changing lighting sources in the United Kingdom” by Hannah Ritchie, published by Our World in Data under CC BY 4.0. Changed here: set as a page, its interactive charts shown as pictures. Data from third parties keeps its own licence.

Nobody has written it yet — it is the source material at a new address, which is why search engines are asked to skip it and why no one earns from it. It is up for grabs: take it on, and it is yours to rewrite and to earn from.