The Cost of Light!

Flick a switch and the light comes on. Have you ever thought about the cost of light throughout history? I found a table of the cost of lighting per million lumen hours in the UK in British Pounds for the period 1301 to 2006. In 1301 The estimated cost of lighting for one million lumen hours was £33,042.9 whereas in 2006, the cost was ƒ2.89 per one million lumen hours. Oddly, the cost in 1301 had rocketed to £40,820.58. Take a look for yourself at this page from DER SPIEGEL/Statista, where you can read: "One hour of light (referred to as the quantity of light shed by a 100 watt bulb in one hour) cost 3,200 times as much in 1800 in England as it does today, amounting to 130 Euros back then (or a little more than 150 dollars). In 1900, it still cost 4 euros (close to 5 dollars). In the year 2000, we arrived at a cost of 4 euro cents (5 US cents)." The following chart shows how much work we have to do to be able to switch the lights on: one second now, 400 hours in 1750 BC! You will find more statistics at Statista Fascinating stuff! DW