On This Day Asia’s FIRST Streetlights Came Up in Bengaluru on 5 August 1905
Bengaluru: While India marks a historic celebration celebrating the Bhoomi Puja of Ram Mandir in Ayodha, today, 5 August 2020, but 115 years ago, on 5 August 1905, Asia’s first streetlights came up in Bengaluru, when the city got nearly 100 of them installed at prominent locations. Sources reveal that within a year, there were 861 streetlights and 1,639 domestic connections.Older Bengalureans may still remember the kerosene lamps – used as standbys during those days when the power supply wasn’t something to take for granted.
These days, we can’t take the power supply from Mescom for granted, but there are things such as gensets and inverters and candles that are cheaper and much more easily available. These kerosene lamps – or a variation of these lamps once lit the main roads of Bengaluru, more than a century ago. It is learnt that lighting up the city’s central areas was dirty work, and that the local administration had appointed three men for the street lamps – one would clean the black smoke left by the burning fuel, the other to pump gas and the other to light the flame. This was a daily evening affair and there was one Light Inspector appointed by the government to monitor the lighting scheme then.
KR Market in 1905 with the FIRST Street Light
Bengaluru K R Market as seen later in the years
Yes, on August 5, 1905, Bengalurueans saw their first electric street-lights. More than a year earlier, William McHutchin, a Briton trained in the Madras Civil Engineering College and the then chief engineer of Bengaluru at the Public Works Department, wrote a letter to the Maharaja of Mysore. “He was a true visionary who saw the prospects of Benguluru turning into a larger city. So, in his letter to the Maharaja, he pressed the need for electrifying Bengaluru with the 300 to 400 HP of surplus power generated by the Shivanasamudra hydro-electric power station which was at the time generating power for the Kolar Gold Fields,”according to historian Gajanana Sharma, a retired superintendent engineer of the Karnataka Power Transmission Corporation Limited (KPTCL).
Sharma knows what he is talking about, being the author of ‘Belakaithu Karnataka’ (Illuminated Karnataka). The book describes the spread of electricity through the state and was launched in 2003 to celebrate the centenary of the electric power in Karnataka. According to Sharma, the Maharaja gave his formal approval for the electrification of Bengaluru in a letter dated May 30, 1904. The project was estimated to cost Rs 7.46 lakh. “Work on the power lines to Bengaluru began at Kankanhalli (now Kanakapura), with the installation of a switch station and lines running 57 miles to the city were laid in just nine months. Interestingly, the numerous twin wooden poles carrying the wires to Bengaluru were specially imported from Australia. The original Kanakapura station building still stands today next to the new one constructed much later,” he says in his book.
The 115-old light pole that lit KR Market still exists and is located in BBMP Building premises
There is a file on the early days of electrified Bengaluru at the Karnataka State Archives on the Bangalore Power and Lighting Scheme 1904-05. Compiled by Major deLotbiniere, it shows an annual maintenance expense of Rs 50,000 and an estimated annual income of over Rs 1.18 lakh. The author clearly foresaw a significant section of the Bengaluru population shifting to electric power – charged at Re 1 per month for an electric bulb. A substation was built near the Victoria hospital with a transformer of 450kv capacity to receive power from Kankanhalli for the city lighting scheme.
The Present Street Lights
“Finally, after nine months of power line works carried out on a war footing, the Saturday evening of August 5, 1905 saw over 100 streetlights lit up Siddikatte, now KR Market, after a ceremony where Sir John Hewett, member of the Viceroy’s Council, pulling the switch much to the awe of the crowd gathered there,” says Sharma. Apart from the streetlights, houses in the area near the market also received power supply and according to an official report of the Bangalore Power and Lighting Scheme in June 1906, there were 861 streetlights and 1,639 domestic connections that generated a revenue of Rs 36,476. A 16 candle bulb (today’s equivalent to 40 watt) cost residents Re 1 every month.
The fare was considered steep and affluent city residents showed off their new sources of illumination. Two of the original 30ft street lamp posts that lit up the night of August 5, 1905 still stand inside the BBMP head office at Corporation Circle but they are in poor shape.
