The first residential electric lighting service wires often were led to the dwelling's attic, notably from the 1880s through around 1910. Soon thereafter such service entries and strict electricity codes mandated electric wiring from the utility to connect to fuse boxes and customers' electric meters in lower levels of such structures, typically in first-floor closets or basements.

In this photo is a working arrangement still in service. I do not know any details since this picture was sent to me. Very likely the utility once employed a per-lightbulb method of billing (via candlepower consumption) opposed to metering.

If you look closely you will see two white-plugged holes in the wall above the fuse box cabinet. Those were for where this two-wire electric service originally entered. As seen within many of my vintage photos here on ICON two wires on residential dwellings with on hook-type insulator brackets on their exteriors connected to attic fuse boxes (and/or meters) within. At some point this installation was upgraded with an electric meter, mounted somewhere else in this dwelling via the heavily-covered cable you see entering the fuse cabinet on the upper right of it.