Light Was So Expensive, People Hunted Whales for It

Look at the nearest light. One hour of it just cost you less than a tenth of a second of work. In 1800, the same light cost more than four hours. Light wasn't free — and just like fire, it came with jobs. Five of them. One smelled like a dead sheep. One wore a jester costume. And one might have walked you straight into a robbery. In this video: the Nobel-winning economist who calculated what light really cost, 17,000-year-old stone lamps, the British candle tax, the theater wick trimmer, London's torch-carrying link boys, the whalers who lit rich people's homes, the lamplighters who still work in London today — and how all five jobs got fired almost at once. 🔥 Part 1 — Fire Created 5 Jobs in the Stone Age (And Paid Nobody):    • Fire Created 5 Jobs in the Stone Age (And ...   🎥 New hand-drawn explainer videos on science and curious history — every week. Subscribe to follow along. #History #Candles #BeforeElectricity 📖 CHAPTERS 00:00 What Your Light Really Costs 00:23 A Nobel Economist Did the Math 00:50 When the Sun Went Down 01:01 The First Light Bill 01:28 Job #1: Tallow Chandler 02:10 The Candle Tax Loophole 02:32 Job #2: Wick Trimmer 03:28 Job #3: Link Boy 04:10 Job #4: Whaler 04:51 Job #5: Lamplighter 05:24 How All Five Got Fired 05:52 Franklin's Candle Joke 06:16 Here's the Twist 06:32 Where the Milky Way Went 06:54 Turn It Off and Look Up ⚠️ NOTE This video is a simplified, illustrated summary of real historical and economic research for educational purposes. The "job listings" are a comedic framing device, and numbers are rounded: the light-cost comparisons use William Nordhaus's 1996 history-of-lighting study (about 800 lumens for one hour, based on average wages), so exact figures vary by place and period. The link boy robbery story reflects what people at the time feared, not a proven pattern, and the jester-costume wick trimmers were found only in some theaters. Franklin's 1784 letter to the Journal de Paris was satire. Other sources include the Swiss National Museum on candle-wick trimming, Hansard records on the British candle tax (1709–1831), Fouquet & Pearson (2006) on British lighting use, and Falchi et al. (2016) on light pollution and the Milky Way.