Gas lighting in
theatres
It took many years of development and testing before gas lighting for the
stage would be commercially available for use in theatres. Gas technology
would then be installed in just about every major theatre in the world.
However, lighting with means of gas would be short lived because the
invention of the electric light bulb would be soon to follow.
It would take close to two hundred years for gas to become accessible for
commercial use. A Flemish alchemist, Jan
Baptista van Helmont was the
first person to formally recognize gas as a state of matter. He would go
on to identify several types of gasses including carbon dioxide. Over one
hundred years later in 1733, Sir James
Lowther had some of his miners
working on a water pit for his mine. While digging the pit they hit a
pocket of gas. Lowther took some sample of the gas and took it home to do
some experiments. He noted "The said air being put into a bladder…and tied
close, may be carried away, and kept some days, and being afterwards
pressed gently through a small pipe into the flame of a candle, will take
fire, and burn at the end of the pipe as long as the bladder is gently
pressed to feed the flame, and when taken form the candle after it is so
lighted, it will continue burning till there is no more air left in the
bladder to supply the flame."(Penzel 28) Lowther had basically discovered
the principle behind gas lighting.
Later in the eighteenth Century William
Murdoch would state: "the gas
obtained by distillation from coal, peat, wood and other inflammable
substances burnt with great brilliancy upon being set fire to … by
conducting it through tubes, it might be employed as an economical
substitute for lamps and candles." (Penzel 29) Murdoch’s first invention
was a lantern with a gas-filled bladder attached to a jet. He would use
this to walk home at night. After seeing how well this worked he decided
to light his home with gas. In 1797, Murdoch would install gas lighting
into his new home as well as the workshop in which he worked. “This work
was of a large scale, and he next experimented to find better ways of
producing, purifying, and burning the gas.”(Penzel 30) The foundation had
been laid for companies to start producing gas and other inventors to
start playing with ways of using the new technology. This new technology
would quickly find its way to the stage.
In the 19th century gas stage lighting would go from a crude experiment to
the most popular way of lighting theatrical stages. In 1804, Frederick
Albert Windsor, a German, first demonstrated the way to use gas to light
the stage in London at the Lyceum
Theatre. Although the demonstration and all the lead research were being
done in London, “in 1816 at the Chestnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia
was the earliest gas lit theatre in world” (Wilson,362). In 1817 the
Lyceum, Drury Lane, and Covent
Garden theatres were all lit by gas. Gas would be brought into the
building by “Miles of rubber tubing from outlets in the floor called
'water joints' carried the gas to border-lights and wing lights". But
before it was distributed, the gas came through a central distribution
point called a “gas table”. (Sellman 15) The gas table was how the
brightness could be “varied by regulating the gas supply, and the gas
table, which allowed control of separate parts of the stage, became the
first stage 'switchboard'". (Pilbrow 174).
By the 1850s gas lighting in theatres had spread practically all over the
United States and Europe. Some of the largest installations of gas
lighting would be in large auditoriums, like the Theatre
de Chatelet, built in 1862 (Penzel 69). In 1875 the new Paris
Opera was constructed. “Its
lighting system contained more than twenty-eight miles of gas piping, and
its gas table had no fewer than eighty-eight stopcocks, which controlled
nine hundred and sixty gas jets.” (Penzel 69) The theatre that used the
most gas lighting was the Astley’s Equestrian Amphitheatre in London.
According to the Illustrated London News “Everywhere white and gold meets
the eye, and about 200,000 gas jets add to the glittering effect of the
auditorium…such a blaze of light and splendour has scarcely ever
witnessed, even in dreams.” (Penzel 69)
Theatres were switching over to gas lighting not just because it was more
economical than using candles but also required less labor to operate.
With gas lighting, theatres would no longer need to have people tending to
candles during a performance, or having to light each candle individually.
“It was easier to light a row of gas jets than a greater quantity of
candles high in the air.” (Pilbrow 174). Theatres also no longer need to
worry about wax dripping on the actors during a show.
Gas lighting also had an effect on the actors. The actors now could use
less make-up and their motions did not have to be as exaggerated. The
reasoning for this was because the stage was now brighter than it had ever
been before. What had once been on half-lit stages was now on in fully lit
stages. Production companies were so impressed with the new technology
that some would go as far to say, “This light is perfect for the stage.
One can obtain gradation of brightness that is really magical.” (Pilbrow
174).
The best thing that happened due to this change was the respect from the
audience. There was no more shouting or riots. The light pushed the actors
more up stage behind the proscenium helping the audience concentrate more
on the action that was taking place on stage rather than what was going on
in the house. Management had more authority on what went on during the
show because they could see (Penzel 54). Gaslight was the leading cause of
behavior change in theaters. It was no longer a place for mingling and
orange selling; it was now a place of respected entertainment.
Gas was distributed throughout the whole theater so, how did the system
actually work? Step one is the heating of coal gas in a cast iron cylinder
and extracting gas from the coal. This process produced an explosive
carbon that was removed simply by turning the cylinder on its side and
placing doors on the ends for the carbon's easy removal. Purified gas
consisted of hydrogen, methane, carbonic oxide, heavy hydrocarbon, and
nitrogen. Gas was stored in tanks called gasometers. Dr. Charles Kugler
came up with this concept and found that carbon was easier to remove from
the gas after the gas was extracted from the gasometer.
Gas was dispensed through iron mains underground leading gas to smaller
cast iron pipes called “services” that led to the burners. Services were
connected to the buildings, but, before this connection, a shut-off line,
which was controlled by the gas companies, was added. This was done as a
safety precaution. The billing was done by counting burners that were in
use. The gas meter was invented around 1815 and measured the amount of gas
being supplied. Once reaching the building, gas was regulated by using a
gas table. This table supplied gas throughout the building with cast-iron
or brass tubing. These tubes were led to outlets that were set in the
house and on the stage. The outlets were connected to gas burners that
produced light to the lighting instruments (Penzel 77).
There were six types of burners but four burners were really experimented
with. The first burner used with this system was the single-jet burner
that produced a small flame. The tip of the burner was made out of lead
which absorbed heat causing the flame to be smaller in size. It was
discovered that the flame would burn brighter if straight metal was mixed
with other components such as porcelain. Flat burners were invented mainly
to evenly distribute gas and light to the systems. The fishtail burner is
a relative to the flat burner but it managed to create a brighter flame
and conducted less heat. The last burner that was experimented with was
the Welsbach burner. Around
this time the Bunsen burner was
in use along with some forms of electricity. The Welsbach was based off
the idea of the Bunsen burner, still using gas, a cotton mesh with cerium
and thorium was imbedded into the Welsbach. This source of light was named
the “gas mantle” which created three times more of the flame (Penzel 89).
Instruments that were used to light the stage during the nineteenth
century fell under different classifications. Footlights, border lights,
groundrows, lengths, bunch lights, conical reflector floods, and limelight
spots were mainly used during this period. These mechanisms sat directly
on the stage blinding the eyesight of the audience. Footlights caused the
actor's costumes to catch fire if they got too close to the lights. These
lights also caused bothersome heat that affected both audience members and
actors. Again, the actors had to adapt to these changes. They started
fireproofing their costumes and placing wire mesh in front of the
footlights.
Border lights, also known as striplights, were a row of lights that hung
horizontally in the flies. Color was added later by dying cotton, wool,
and silk cloth. Lengths were constructed the same way as the border light,
only these lights were mounted vertically in the rear where the wings
were. Bunch lights are a cluster of burners that sat on a vertical base
that was fueled directly from the gas line. The conical reflector can be
related to Fresnels that
are currently used today. This adjustable box of light reflected a beam in
which the size could be altered by a barndoor. Limelight spots are similar
to today’s current spotlighting system. This instrument was used in scene
shops as well as the stage (Penzel 95).
Gas lighting did have some disadvantages. "Several hundred theatres are
said to have burned down in America and Europe between 1800 and the
introduction of electricity in the late 1800s. The increased heat was
objectionable, and the border lights and wing lights had to be lighted by
a long stick with a flaming wad of cotton at the end. For many years, an
attendant or gas boy moved along the long row of jets, lighting them
individually while gas was escaping from the whole row. Both actors and
audiences complained of the escaping gas, and explosions sometimes
resulted from its accumulation." (Sellman 15)
These problems with gas lighting led to the rapid adoption of electric
lighting. “Thomas Edison’s electricincandescent lamp, invented in 1879. By
1881, the Savoy Theatre in London was using incandescent lighting.”
(Wilson 364). As electric lighting was being introduced to theatre stages,
people who still were using theatre lighting developed the gas
mantle in 1885. “This was a
beehive-shaped mesh of knitted thread impregnated with lime that, in
miniature, converted the naked gas flame into in effect, a lime-light.”
(Baugh, 24). However, this made the light produced brighter, an
“Engineering report indicates, the pressure to achieve audience comfort,
convenience and, above all, the safety that electricity provided ensured
that electric technology was rapidly introduced.” (Baugh 24). Electric
lighting would slowly take over all lighting, not just in theatres, but
everywhere else. In the twentieth century, electric lighting would lead to
even better and safer theater productions. These productions would be
comfortable to watch with no smell, relatively very little heat, and more
freedom for designers.
