[PRCo] An (arguably) Interesting Comparison....

[ktjosephson at earthlink.net]

rogertrolley wrote:

 "Back in 1958 it seemed an achronism that it was that way,whereas you would
think the big city would be far more modernistic than the small burg like
Johnstown would have been !!!"

This is neither Pittsburgh nor trolley related, so have your fingers on the
delete key if you don't wish to see it (Derrick will slap me around
later....)

I grew up in a city which had a 1960s population over 700,000. Many of the
surrounding small cities and towns (some with less than 5,000 people) began
installing mercury vapor street lights in the 1950s. My city continued to
install incandescent street lighting until about 1968. The city initially
tried mecury vapor lighting on utility poles in alleys, though a number of
private businesses, shopping centers and large factories had been using such
lighting as soon as it became available.

High pressure sodium lighting was introduced in the inner city long before
the rest of the town was converted to mercury vapor. When some of the more
affluent suburbs began replacing their mercury vapor and incandescent street
lighting with high pressure sodium, many of their residents expressed fear
that installing "ghetto lighting" would imply high crime and reduce their
property values.

To try to tie in the above with the topic of this forum, some of the Roberta
Hill pictures taken along Route 85 in the Hill District show city crews
replacing older incandescent lighting with new cobra head mercury vapor
fixtures along Bedford Avenue and Wylie.

I believe some of these are posted on Dave Mewhinney's Pittsburgh page.

K.