Historical Statistics of the Day
According to William Nordhaus, quoted in McCloskey’s Bourgeois Dignity, here is how many hours of labor it took to provide 1,000 lumen hours of lighting:
In 9000 B.C., 50 hours of labor (kindling for the fire)
In 1800, 5 hours (wax candles)
In 1900, 0.22 hours (kerosene and electric lights)
In 1992, 0.00012 hours (really cheap electric lights)
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Author
Brandon Dupont, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Economics at Western Washington University where he teaches economic history, the history of economic thought, microeconomics, labor economics and political economy. He has published on a variety of topics in American economic history and labor economics and is currently working on an undergraduate history of economic thought textbook.