Looking Backward (Not Forward) to Environmental Justice

Abstract

On September 4, 1882, at 3:00 p.m., Thomas Edison was in J. P. Morgan’s offices on Wall Street—literally inside the mahogany walls. And when he closed a switch shortly after the clock struck three, hundreds of his incandescent bulbs lit up simultaneously in a five-block radius. It seemed like a miracle to the gathered crowd—like magic. People started murmuring, “They’re on!” The bulbs stayed on as evening fell, and everyone in lower Manhattan noticed how different they were from the smelly, unsteady gas lamps that they were used to. The next day, the New York Times reported that the “light was soft, mellow, and graceful to the eye. It seemed almost like writing by daylight to have a light without a particle of flicker and with scarcely any heat to make the head ache.”¹