Arc light

Here is one lighting technology that didn't make it very far into the 20th century. It's an arc light from the late 1880s used as a street light as an alternative to gas lamps. It worked by sending electric current across a gap between two pieces of carbon, which gave off a glow as the carbon burned. Incandescent lighting ultimately won out over arc lamps.

GE held its lighting symposium on October 21 to commemorate the day in 1879 when Thomas Edison was able to run an incandescent lightbulb for several hours, a technical breakthrough at the time.