Street lighting began in 1414

Street lighting began in 1414 when a city ordinance in London required every house and store owner on certain streets to hang out at least one horn-sided lantern at sunset. Paris, in 1558, led the world in municipal street lighting when it installed tall vases at important street corners in which pitch was burned each night with flickering, sooty results. These various crude outdoor lighting methods strove ineffectually for more than 450 years to achieve what the electric carbon and filament lamps have done in the last 40 years.