What Is This Man Up To?
Who is this man wearing overalls and a jaunty fedora, and what is he up to?
When this photograph was taken, somewhere near Denver, Colorado, early in this century, the romantic figure immortalized in Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem “The Lamplighter” had been replaced by a well-trained technician —the arc-light trimmer. His job, in part, was to change the large pencil-shaped carbon rods used to produce the glowing electrical arc in arc lights. Not only were oil and gas lamps outmoded, but the light they had produced paled in comparison with the strong glare of this electric light, so well suited for suburban roads and modern city streets. The same Stevenson who wrote so warmly about this man’s predecessor later referred to the arc as a “lamp for a nightmare” and asserted, “Such a light as this should shine only on murders and public crime … a horror to heighten horror.” Nonetheless, from the mid-1870s on, the arc light proved popular, and countless American city streets came under its glare.
About the only vestige of the earlier era was to be found in the worker’s title. The word trimmer , albeit not totally inaccurate in describing this new occupation, barkened back to the time of the oil lamp. The burned end of an oil lamp’s cotton wick had needed almost daily trimming or squaring off to produce a decent light. Visits to the arc lights in his charge were likely to be daily as well, but now the work could require the exactness of a watchmaker. This new, very unromantic lamplighter was a symbol of the new age.
Unlike the old lamplighter, who traveled about on foot each evening with ladder on shoulder and gas key and taper in hand, the man in this photograph made his journeys in the daytime. Resting against the pole from which the lamp hangs is the mechanic’s modern safety bicycle, a refinement resulting from the bicycling craze late in the last century, complete with pneumatic tires and patented saddle. The lamp, suspended on rope and pulleys, was lowered by the workman to a convenient height for servicing, although in some locations he had to climb to the top of the lamp pole and reel in the lamp to make his repairs.
Almost totally automatic, such lamps would begin to operate as soon as electricity reached their delicate electromechanical workings. Carbon life averaged eight to ten hours in this openglobe type; in models with a nearly airtight globe, carbon life increased tenfold. Their points were in contact when the current was off; immediately upon being energized, they were drawn apart, and an arc formed across the gap. As the carbons burned away, the rather narrow tolerance of the gap was lost and the mechanism worked continuously to regain it. Although the movement was slight, this action caused a perceptible flickering in the lights. The lamp this worker trims carried a single pair of carbons, probably of an improved design sure to last the whole night. Housed in what appears to be a tank above the globe is the intricate control system.
Although the electricity would have been off during daylight hours, it is evident that standard operating procedures dictated that the mechanic take no chances. The current, of course, would have been instantly at hand had some distant and unthinking worker thrown the wrong switch. The trimmer stands triply insulated from the potentially lethal danger just beyond the tar and varnished cloth insulation of the electrical wires. Besides his heavy gloves, he wears rubber boots. And as an added precaution he stands on a little wooden stool, not to be closer to his work but to isolate himself from the obviously damp ground. Thus protected, he can safely remove the stub ends of the exhausted carbons and replace them with fresh ones from the pockets in his canvas vest.
By the 1930s the glow was going out on the arc-light trimmer. His job was as outof-date as was Stevenson’s lamplighter’s of a century before.
