Today, an electric-light opera. The University of
Houston's College of Engineering presents this
series about the machines that make our
civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity
created them.
From a remote corner of the
Eastman School of Music Library comes the strangest
item. It's title is ELECTRIC LIGHT: An American
Comic Opera, in three Acts. What's so odd is
that it carries the date 1879. Not till October
21st of that year would Edison finally manage to
make a successful incandescent lamp. Not till the
year following did he demonstrate electric lighting
publicly.
This is only a libretto. We don't know what the
music sounds like. If it was any good, I'll bet
this was a nice evening's entertainment. There are
a boy and a girl, of course. She's the daughter of
a politician; he, the nephew of an eccentric
inventor.
The inventor has figured out how to make an
electric light, and he's trying to raise money for
the project. After all the usual music theater
complications, the boy and girl are joined. Her
father is elected. The uncle builds his electric
lighting system. And they do it all scant months
ahead of the real Edison.
So did the librettists show an uncanny ability to
read the future? I don't think so. Go back and read
any serious history of electric lighting. The
Encyclopaedia Britannica is typical. It
reports Edison's work along with that of many
others. The English inventor Swan was ahead of
Edison with a workable light bulb. Many other
incandescent lights were made in the years before
either this light opera or Edison's lamp. Some of
Edison's fame is deserved, of course. His bulldog
tenacity is what brought lighting systems to
market. But the librettists had plenty of warning
that electric lighting was coming, Edison or no.
The inventor in the opera sings about how he got
his idea:
As I sat,
I saw in my lap,
Enjoying her nap,
Tabby cat.
I stroked her soft fur,
Which made tabby purr -
Wondrous sight!
There leaped from her back
With snap and with crack,
Sparks of light!
As far as means for harnessing that light, he tells
us nothing.
The libretto gets more interesting when it
introduces two minor characters, both women. One is
a general; the other is a doctor. They do little
more than listen to the posturing men around them.
Then they mutter off to the side, "When we get the
suffrage, we'll change all that," or "What this
country needs is a 16th amendment." By the time
women finally got the vote, we were up to the 19th
amendment. And a footnote tells us that those two
characters were cut from the first performance to
shorten the work.
But if suffrage had to wait, electric lighting was
there for us to buy just a few years later, and the
closing chorus rejoices,
Light electric! Light celestial!
From the mountain summits flash
Peer of day and king of night,
Oh, flash, Electric Light.
I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston,
where we're interested in the way inventive minds
work.
(Theme music)
Hazelton, Wm. B., Spencer, E., and Furst, W. W.,
ELECTRIC LIGHT, An American Comic Opera, in Three
Acts. Baltimore: The Sun Book and Job Printing
Office, 1879.
I am grateful to David Peter Coppen, Special
Collections Librarian, Eastman School of Music, for
kindly providing a photocopy of this remarkable old
item. I am also grateful to two UH librarians for
their help: Pat Bozeman first spotted the existence
of the libretto, and Laura Snyder led me to D. P.
Coppen.
Title page of the comic opera
For a view of the cast list and the first page,
click
here.
The Engines of Our Ingenuity is
Copyright © 1988-2000 by John H.
Lienhard.
