This is an exemplary example of what the first electric street lights looked like! In brief, these fixtures contained two carbon arcs within an open glass globe. The carbon rods were replaced every day or two. They were commonplace here in the US until the later 1890s until when more "contained" arc lights came onto the scene. They were a bit more efficient and required maintenance only every 7 to 10 days. Like their "open arc" predecessors, the enclosed arc lights operated on the same electrical "street series" circuits. Fundamentally, like a string of little Christmas lights... a provision was made within the fixture to keep the rest of the series loop lit in case one or more of the lights did not work.

Edison Electric's service was distributed via the six-pin crossarm line as seen, lowest on this pole. The lines above most likely were for telephone service.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++