held up to the light, from one street away; from two blocks away, he could still read the headlines; from four blocks away he could make out the advertisements. Demand for the Brush street lighting system grew quickly, as it provided higher-quality light for one-third the cost of gas lamps. In 1880, Brush conducted a demonstration in New York City, erecting 23 arc lamps along Broadway. As a result, Brush won several city contracts including contracts for lighting Union Square and Madison Square, where towers were erected for the arc lamps. On major thoroughfares such as Broadway, arc lamps were placed on lampposts at 250-foot intervals; by 1886, approximately 30 miles of thoroughfares in New York City were lit by arc lamps. On Fifth Avenue, however, arc lamps were dismantled after residents complained that the wires connecting the fixtures were "unsightly", and most of the street "returned to the gloom of gas." By 1893, New York City had 1,535 electric arc street lights. In New Orleans, arc lamps were used for street lighting starting in 1881. In 1882, the New Orleans Brush Lighting Company installed one hundred 2,000-candlepower arc lamps along five miles of wharf and riverfront; by 1885, New Orleans had 655 arc lights. In Chicago, arc lamps were used in public street lighting starting in 1887. At first, arc lamps were only used on Chicago River bridges, but by 1910, they were used more widely on major Chicago streets. Incandescent lights During the first two decades of the 20th century, there was intense competition among providers of various forms of street lighting, including carbon arc lamps; incandescent lamps; traditional coal gas lamps; and gasoline and naphtha street lamps. Incandescent lamps were initially developed primarily for indoor use, but major technology breakthroughs in 1907 and 1911 perfected the use of tungsten filaments. From 1911 onward, electric incandescent lamps with tungsten filaments became an increasingly popular choice among municipal utilities for public street lighting. In 1919, San Francisco introduced tungsten bulbs on Van Ness Avenue, between Vallejo and Market Street, replacing gas mantles and arc lamps. The city used two 250-candlepower tungsten lamps per column, on sixteen columns for every block. According to The Electrical Review: “Under the old system of lighting it was dangerous for a pedestrian to attempt to cross the street because of the heavy automobile traffic. Now the entire street is flooded with evenly distributed light