City of Light: The Story of Fiber Optics

16 CITY OF LIGHT
Special Effects for Faust
Daniel Colladon’s interests turned toward the practical side of science we now
call engineering. He designed a plant to extract gas from coal for the spreading
network of gas lamps in Geneva. Later he helped build other plants in Basel,
Bern, Lausanne, and Naples. But he didn’t forget light guiding.
Lighting was a problem in nineteenth-century theaters; candles, gas lights,
and lanterns cast only feeble illumination and raised the specter of fire. In
1849, the Paris Opera began testing electric arcs, which passed a strong
current between a pair of carbon electrodes to create a blindingly bright light.
Producing the current was not easy, but the opera found it worth the effort
because audiences liked the bright lights. Four years later, Colladon helped
the opera duplicate his light-guiding trick as a special effect to catch audience
attention in a ballet called ‘‘Élias et Mysis.’’ Gounod’s opera Faust followed,
with light from an arc lamp focused along a red-glass tube filled with water
in a scene where the devil (Mephistopheles) makes a stream of fire flash from
a wine barrel. It wouldn’t hold a candle to modern special effects, but it was
impressive to 1853 audiences who saw bright lights as a novelty. 14
The opera recognized a good crowd pleaser and in 1855 put L. J. Duboscq,
who had worked with Colladon, on the full-time payroll. 15 He brought mock
suns, rainbows, and lightning to the opera stage. He also designed illuminated
playthings for the rich, which he eventually offered in an 1877 illustrated
catalog. People could spend up to 1000 francs for luminous fountains, where
light played on dancing water, its color changing as a wheel rotated color
filters in front of a lamp. 16
Illuminated Fountains and Great Exhibitions
Luminous fountains took on a much grander scale in the series of great exhibitions
the Victorians held to celebrate technological progress. Light was a
symbol of that progress to people who grew up with only the feeble light of
gas lamps and lanterns to fend off the night. Electric arcs were rare before
electric power generators began to spread, but the fairs had their own generators.
The Victorian public came to marvel at bright outdoor lights, and
illuminated fountains were among the most spectacular evening displays.
The first great fountains were at the International Health Exhibition, held
in the South Kensington district of London in 1884. The Prince of Wales had
urged the eight water companies serving London to build a pavilion showing
how they gave the city clean, pure water. That inspired Sir Francis Bolton,
an engineer who was the city’s water examiner, to design giant illuminated
fountains to highlight the display. 17 The new incandescent light bulb was far
too faint to light the fountains. Bolton lit them with the fiery streaks of controlled
lightning in electric arcs. Arc lights at the base of the fountain shone
through glass plates onto the rising water jets. Other arc lights illuminated