Geograph - photograph every grid square

Road lighting predates the earliest cars by thousands of years. In the 5th century BC, people in Beijing used bamboo pipes to harness and lead natural gas from volcano leaks to their communities which they then used to ignite lamps that lit up their thoroughfares at night. 1417 marked the first organized public street lighting system in London. Its mayor, Sir Henry Barton, ordered people to place oil lanterns outside their homes at night during the winter. In 1802, William Murdoch invented the first coal-ignited gas lighting system and in 1879 Paris produced the world’s first electric streetlight system. A year later, Thomas Edison introduced the first carbon-thread incandescent lamp. By 1965 most systems used high-pressure sodium (HID) lamps. Today, street lighting commonly uses high-intensity discharge lamps. Milan, Italy is the first major city to have entirely switched to LED lighting

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