The first electrically lighted city (INDIANA TOWN PROUD OF BRIGHT PAST)

WABASH, Ind. (WPTA21) - Every evening, the Wabash County Courthouse shines a beacon of light across the downtown area, like it has done for over 140 years. In fact, the town boasts an interesting claim to fame: the first electrically lit city in the world! “That’s kind of a strange distinction,” Wabash County Historical Museum archivist TJ Honeycutt clarified. “I should point out there were other places uses electric lights in other context but we were the first city to use only electric lights to light our town.” “It shows in an interesting way,” he added, “how small town people can come together and engage in a unique project together that ends up accidentally planting us into world history.” In the late 1800′s, Cleveland inventor Charles Brush modified the arc lighting system, utilizing motors to control the distance between two carbon rods, in which electricity jumped from one to another, creating consistent electrically powered light. As an advertising stunt for his new lighting system, Brush searched for the first city to install them — and Wabash, Indiana caught his eye. With a brand new courthouse, placed on top of a hill, the light cast down from it would brighten up the entire town. On March 31, 1880, four Brush Arc Lights were installed. “They invited people from all over the country to come, there were delegations from New York City,” Honeycutt told us. “They ended up lighting broadway with the Brush System as a result.” The lights instantly impacted the community — even before they officially debuted. “Local people actually got to see it the night before, because they wanted to see if it actually worked,” he told us. “The newspaper runs a pretty funny story because at that time teenage girlfriends and boyfriends would walk around in the dark together and they said the streets were full of parting couples as soon as the lights flipped on because hand holding was a little risqué in 1880.” And to those who lived nearby, the novelty of being on the forefront of cutting edge technology, wore off quickly. With an intensity, described as 3,000 candlepower, much like that created when welding — the flickering brightness soon began receiving complaints. “The people who lived around the courthouse directly hated the lighting system because they would leave it on until 2 a.m. most nights,” Honeycutt explained. “Also, someone had to climb the tower of the courthouse, open the hatch and change the rods every two weeks, and that was also pretty unpopular.” They would remain in place until September, 1888. Now, only one of the original lights remains, on display on the first floor of the courthouse. “They did hold on a lot longer in other applications,” he said. “Factories used the Brush Lighting System for 50 more years. Arc projection in movie projectors lasted into the 1970′s, so the light system held on in other applications.” For the 100th anniversary of the event, new replica lights were installed in their place, and shine bright over Wabash in a much more pleasant manner. Regardless, the Brush Arc Lights remain a bright spot in 21Country’s history. “It definitely raised Wabash’s profile with other, bigger towns around us as a place that was willing to engage and experiment,” Honeycutt told us. “The mayor at the time, was a brigadier general from the Civil War, and he said ‘it exemplified a progressive spirit that was willing to grow into a new era.’” The 1880′s were a time of major technological change,” he continued, “and he wanted to plant the flag that Wabash would be that sort of place.”