Canal at Night - a photo on Flickriver

Canal at Night

            The streets of Amsterdam are well lit at night, certainly better than the street where I live in Folkestone. But of course it wasn’t always that way.

In the 1600s Amsterdam grew rapidly, in fact it doubled from 100,000 in 1600 to 200,000 in 1670. This was the period when all those iconic houses along the canals were built. But then, as now, the dark seems to spawn all kinds of danger and at night unsavoury elements crept out of their daytime holes to commit all manner of criminal behaviour. If that wasn’t bad enough there were many cases of people falling into canals and drowning.

Attempts were made by the authorities to bring some light to the city at night. Beginning in 1505 the law required anyone abroad after 9:00 pm. to carry a lantern. In 1544, street lanterns were hung in the busiest streets. By 1579, lanterns were lit on bridges, and inns were obliged to keep a light in their front room until 10:00 pm. In 1595, this was expanded to requiring every twelfth house on a street to hang out a burning candle housed in a lantern.

But those laws were difficult to enforce. Wax candles were expensive and tallow candles burned out if the wick was not cut every few minutes. In 1597 the city appointed people to act as Night Lantern Lighters but there were still many drowning deaths from falling into water at night, and the Rattle Watch (watchmen provided with rattles for sounding an alarm) had trouble performing their night duties with a rattle in one hand and a lantern in the other. “Hold on, I’ve only got one pair of hands….”

Enter Jan van der Heyden (1637-1712), a man you’ve probably never heard of. He was a painter specializing in painting buildings along the canal streets, so he was keenly aware of the lighting problems. I believe he is regarded as having been a successful artist, but perhaps he had to supplement his income from painting because he also worked in his brother’s mirror shop. He had studied mechanics and had invented the fire hose and other fire-fighting equipment.

By the summer of 1669, he had perfected a municipal lighting plan burning oil rather than candles in lanterns.  The key materials were tin and glass, items familiar from the mirror shop where he worked.  Van der Heyden presented his idea to the Amsterdam mayors, and recommended positioning the lights on every street and canal. What’s more, he offered to make all 1,800 lanterns himself. A true businessman, he added annual maintenance by himself for one year to his quote, extendable for twenty years.

Well, the Mayors took up his lighting plan if not his maintenance contract, but they gave van der Heyden the title Director of the Municipal Lights and a generous annual salary of 2,000 guilders, which he collected until his death in 1712.

Although his early lamps smoked and leaked, van der Heyden quickly improved his design. Since rising heat inside the lantern was a problem, he redesigned the specific shape of the glass and added air holes to encourage the smoke to escape efficiently and to consume less oil, linseed oil from December through February as it did not freeze. He controlled manufacture of the wicks himself, insisting on pure Cypriot cotton. He even mathematically calculated the spacing of lanterns every 125 to 150 feet for optimal lighting.

By 1670 Amsterdam boasted 1,800 street lamps, and by 1681 2,400 lamps. Obviously somebody had to pay for all this so taxes went up, but they were already notoriously high in Amsterdam anyway and I guess although I’m sure they grumbled about it, the residents appreciated the safer streets and prestige that street lighting gave the city.

It wasn’t long before other cities adopted similar lighting and by 1700 consistent and reliable street lighting had also been established in Paris, Turin, London, Copenhagen, Hamburg and Vienna.

Taken on: November 9, 2018

Sets appears in: • My personal favourites • Amsterdam

Camera: RICOH IMAGING COMPANY, LTD. GR, f/2.8, 1/10 sec, 18.3mm (=28mm), ISO 3200 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	RICOH IMAGING COMPANY, LTD. GR
Lens:	GR LENS
Aperture:	f/2.8
Exposure Time:	0.1 sec (1/10)
Focal Length:	18.3mm (35mm equivalent: 28mm)
ISO:	3200
Exposure Bias:	-1 EV
Flash:	Off, Did not fire
Exposure Program:	Program AE
Exposure Mode:	Auto
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
White Balance:	Manual
Light Source:	Tungsten (Incandescent)
Sharpness:	Hard
Color Space:	sRGB
Software:	Adobe Photoshop Elements 11.0 Windows
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