• The earliest lamps were used by Greek and Roman civilizations, where light primarily served the purpose of security, both to protect from tripping and keeping robbers at bay.
• The Romans had a word ‘laternarius’, which was a term for a slave responsible for lighting up the oil lamps
• Candle lighting was the first to be employed. The earliest lamps required that a ‘’lamplighter’’ tour the town at dusk, lighting each of the lamps.
• The first modern cast iron light street lamps, which used kerosene, were introduced in Lviv in what was then the Austrian Empire in 1853.
• The first electric cast iron lamppost light got the nickname ‘Electric candle’, Electric arc lamps were developed by a Russian Pavel Yablochkov in 1875.
• New cast iron street lighting in Paris, France gave rise to the nickname “City of Lights”.

Street Lighting In Ireland

• A form of private street light began in Dublin as early as 1616, when the Candlelight Law was passed, “compelling every fifth house to display a light within prescribed hours”. Candle lighting gradually gave way to oil lighting after this time.
• The first piped-gas cast iron lamppost appeared in Dublin in 1825, and gas was used up to 1957, although it was overtaken by electric light in its later years
• The first public electric cast iron lamppost in Ireland was at Princes Street outside the offices of the Freeman’s Journal in 1880.
• With onset of the industrial revolution it allow cast iron to be produced more cheaply, which then gave rise to mass production which allowed cast iron lampposts, wall lights, pillar lights ,street light, and park lighting, to be produced on a massive scale.