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A lamplighter, historically, was an employee of a town who lit street lights, generally by means of a wick on a long pole. At dawn, they would return and turn them off using a small hook on the same pole. Early street lights were generally candles, oil, and similar consumable liquid or solid lighting sources with wicks. Another lamplighter duty was to come with a ladder and renew the candles, oil, or gas mantles. In some communities, lamplighters served in a role akin to a town watchman; in others, it may have been seen as little more than a sinecure. In the 19th century, gas lights became the dominant form of street lighting. Early gaslights required lamplighters, but eventually systems were developed which allowed the lights to operate automatically.
There is a long history of the role of a lamplighter-as-lightbringer as a symbolic figure in literature.
The Burning Man festival makes use of lamplighters.
Lamplighters in Fiction
- The Lamplighter was an 1854 novel by Maria Susanna Cummins.
- A lamplighter, never actually seen, is the central figure in Bolesław Prus' 1885 micro-story, "Shades."
- The Lamplighter was a 1929 collection of poems by Irish poet Seamus O'Sullivan.
- A lamplighter who lives on an asteroid that rotates once a minute was one of the inhabitants of the universe in Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's 1943 novel, The Little Prince.
- "Lamplighters" are referred to in John le Carré's novels, notably Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1974), and Smiley's People (1979), frequently associated with their boss, Toby Esterhase; their job is to carry out surveillance.
- "Lamplighter" was a 1987 children's story by Bernice Thurman Hunter.
- "The Lamplighter" was a Golden Age superhero in Kurt Busiek's Astro City comic books.
- Lamplighter (comics) is also the name of a DC Comics supervillain.
- Lamplighter is the title of the second book in fantasy author D. M. Cornish's trilogy Monster Blood Tattoo.
- "The Lamplighter" is the name of Paul Laurence Dunbar High School's student newspaper in Lexington, Kentucky.
Other uses
- "Lamplighter" is a historic nightclub in Vancouver.
- L. Jagi Lamplighter is an American science fiction writer.
- Lamplighters Music Theatre, a San Francisco-based light opera company.
- Lamplighters Theatre, a Smyrna, Tennessee-based community theatre.
- When It's Lamp Lighting Time in the Valley, a song
- Lamplighter is a Jewish publication printed weekly and distributed all over Australia and New Zealand. On the web at: http://lamplighterweekly.com/
- The Lamplighter group is a mathematical object.
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