CIVE 3800-01: Engineering Boston

Provides an accounting of the department's budget and activities. It also describes the various types of lighting used in Boston at the beginning of the 20th century,

Information on the conversion to LED lighting, with facts and figures on Boston's streetlighting system.

This catalog was produced by the Brush Electric Company which provided the first arc lighting in Boston.

An illustrated textbook on late 19th-century electric power generators and lighting.

An illustrated brochure showing the electric light bulb and equipment used in the Edison electric lighting system.

This Smithsonian Magazine article discusses the "War of the Currents" waged between George Westinghouse's alternating current (invented by Nikola Tesla) and Thomas Edison's direct current electrical system.

This company supplied Boston with high-powered arc lighting equipment in the early 1880s. It later merged with the Edison General Electric Co.

A detailed description of gas lighting, as well as lamps produced by various manufacturers in the closing years of the 19th century.

A commemorative pamphlet on the incandescent illumination of Boston by the Edison Company on February 20, 1886.

This article by Massimo Guarnieri recounts the progression from gas lighting to arc lighting and, finally, to incandescent street lighting.