17. Benjamin Franklin did not invent streetlamps, but he did improve them
Before electric lights municipalities provided light on their streets through the use of streetlamps, which Benjamin Franklin observed in London. He found the London design to be inefficient, the round lamps did not allow smoke to exit. The smoke obstructed the light, and the oily soot left behind obstructed it further. Cleaning was problematic. It was time-consuming, and it was lamp globe-consuming; the globes were fragile and easily broken when being removed for cleaning. Thus London was burning expensive whale oil to provide light which was of little benefit for its citizens.
It was Franklin who proposed replacing the round globes with rectangular panes of glass, sloped outward as they rose to the top of the lamp, which included a central chimney which efficiently allowed the smoke to exhaust. The outward slope of the panes helped to keep the lamps dry. They were also easier to clean, as the panels were thicker and thus less fragile than the round globes previously used. For this, Franklin is often credited with the invention of streetlamps but, as with Edison more than a century later, Franklin actually developed an improvement to an existing light source. Franklin copied a design that he had seen in use in the house of a friend, with adjustments to the lamp’s wick as well as the chimney.