And Then There Was Light:  A Short History of Fueling the Flame

June 18 – December 16, 2016

The ability to have artificial light in your home that is bright enough to read a book, cook your dinner and go about your life after sunset is a modern reality. The action of merely flipping a switch that magically lights up a room would have made our ancestors gasp in wonderment. Over the centuries, in fact over many millennia, lighting the home has been a challenge.

Once man acquired the ability to produce fire, we had to then design a way to safely contain the light. This process of experimentation produced the invention of the lamp. A lamp however cannot hold a small fire, so our ancestors had to find the most important clue to this puzzle, they had to find a way to fuel the flame…