ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

A light in the darkness: Presences and meanings of an electric lamp in Northern Spain (1851-2025)

• In Event: Shifting Perspectives: Hands on Instruments Approaches (with Gloves) to Writing a History of Scientific Practices I

English Abstract

An old electric arc-lamp built by the French instrument maker Deleuil can be found at the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain). It is part of its Cabinet of Physics and Chemistry since at least 1852. It represents an early example of a particular class of instruments: self-regulating electric arc lamps—which sustained the arc without requiring manual adjustment of the carbon electrodes. Sometime in the last century, the lamp was abandoned in a small storage cabinet, out of sight and its historical and museological relevance was concealed.
In 1851, the Galician chemist Antonio Casares performed at the University a public demonstration: he illuminated the main cloister with, precisely, an electric arc-lamp. This newfangled experiment had a strong impact, being heralded by different press articles as the very first electric-light demonstration in Spain. It was framed within an optimistic narrative that celebrated the scientific and technological development, in line with the nineteenth-century myth of progress.
Situated at the intersection of historiography and museology, this paper examines the history of this instrument and its connection with the Casares demonstration. The striking contrast between the lamp’s material presence and symbolic significance in 1852 and its diminished status today offers an opportunity to explore the complex dynamic of meaning and presence building processes. That is, how instrument’s materiality, location, and interpretive frameworks evolve in response to shifting scientific and sociopolitical contexts.
Finally, by analysing an exhibition commemorating the 150th anniversary of Casares’s demonstration, I reflect on the consequences of detaching historical meaning from an object’s materiality. In doing so, I argue for a more object-centred curatorial approach that puts the scientific instrument to the core of its own historical narrative.

Author

• Anxo Vidal Nogueira, Universitat de Valencia