41 Hours of Work For One Hour of Light (Worldbuilding & Medieval History)

Worldbuilding light is the one cost nobody prices: your characters can see each other at night, and almost nobody in a pre-industrial world could afford that. In 1996 the Yale economist William Nordhaus priced an hour of light across four thousand years. For the oldest lamps the answer comes out at forty-one hours of work for one hour of light. This video follows that number forward through the things people actually burned: tallow candles rendered from beef and mutton fat, the beeswax the Church could afford and a labourer could not, the rushlight a poor family lit for about a farthing an hour, the couvre-feu that turns out to be a fire law rather than a boot on the neck, the link boys who walked you home, and the iron extinguisher still bolted beside doors in London and Bath. Then the part that changes your setting: what cheap light does to a working day, which four trades it wipes out, and why a light cantrip is not a shortcut past this problem but the most interesting plot in it. Part of the Atlas & Ashes series on what a world actually pays to exist. CHAPTERS 0:00 The scene in your notes 1:05 Nordhaus, 1996: how you price an hour of light 2:03 41 hours of work for one hour of light 2:52 Tallow: candles made of rendered beef fat 3:59 Beeswax, the Church, and who could afford it 4:51 What the poor actually burned: the rushlight 6:36 Two economies of light, and your tavern 8:12 Couvre-feu: the curfew was a fire law 10:07 Link boys and the extinguisher by the door 11:03 The Arctic qulliq and the Hawaiian kukui 13:17 Why we cannot feel this any more 14:41 "But my world has magic" - follow the money 16:48 The four-step toolkit, and turning most of it out Sources: William Nordhaus, "Do Real-Output and Real-Wage Measures Capture Reality?" (1996); Gilbert White costing rushlights for a poor family at Selborne (1775); the Tallow Chandlers' royal charter from Edward IV (1462); the Leicester cloth-fraud conviction (1254). What is the first night scene you ever wrote, and could anyone standing in it actually afford to see? Tell me in the comments. #worldbuilding #atlasandashes #dnd #medievalhistory #fantasywriting #worldbuildingtips #dndworldbuilding #fantasyeconomy #writingtips #creativewriting #ttrpg #authortube #fantasyworldbuilding