140 years ago, the lights were turned on in San Francisco for the first time

St. Ignatius Church and College as it appeared in 1863. The building was located on the south side of an unpaved Market Street, between Fourth and Fifth streets. St. Ignatius Church and College as it appeared in 1863. The building was located on the south side of an unpaved Market Street, between Fourth and Fifth streets. Photo: University Of San Francisco Archives Photo: University Of San Francisco Archives Image 1 of / 52 Caption Close 140 years ago, the lights were turned on in San Francisco for the first time 1 / 52 Back to Gallery

July 4, 1876 was the grandest day San Francisco had ever seen.

For weeks, the city prepared for the young nation's centennial. They draped American flags and bunting on every doorway and balcony in town. In glowing terms, the San Francisco Bulletin reported that huge paintings of Revolutionary War heroes were placed in "conspicuous places here, there and everywhere."

Businesses were on their third straight day of celebration closures. Reverends in the town's Protestant churches gave centennial-themed Sunday sermons. Catholic churches held a special High Mass. On the bay and on land, revolutionary battles were reenacted for thrilled crowds. Thousands of celebrants disembarked from ferries all day long, swelling San Francisco — which had an 1870 population of 149,473 — to over 400,000 people.

"Such patriotic enthusiasm and lavishness to decorative display has not been exhibited probably by any other city," declared the Bulletin.

But the most glorious moment of the celebration was still to come.

At sunset, shopkeepers and businessmen lit thousands of candles and Chinese lanterns. As San Francisco gleamed with candlelight, a nighttime parade of 10,000 politicians and military figures began down Market Street.

Above the procession on the roof of St. Ignatius Church, Father Joseph Neri pulled a lever. All along Market between Fourth and Fifth, "a stream of soft, mellow light" glowed from the lamps and reflectors strung from the church roof to the other side of the street.

The streets of San Francisco were lit with electricity for the first time — three years before Thomas Edison introduced his incandescent light to the world.

The momentous achievement was years in the making. By the time he flipped the switch, Father Neri was already a well-known scientific figure in San Francisco. He was born in Italy in 1836 and immigrated to America with a group of Jesuit novices in 1858. He studied at Georgetown for two years before moving to the Bay Area where he taught at Jesuit Santa Clara College.

In 1869, he took a job at St. Ignatius College — today known as the University of San Francisco — where the next year, he became the chair of the natural science department.

From nearly the first day of his arrival in San Francisco, strange lights began to emanate from St. Ignatius Church at night. Curious San Franciscans would stop in front of the building, watching the electric light. The lights were powered by the first storage battery in California, which was made of peroxide, lead and 30 chemical plates.

The city's curiosity piqued, Father Neri gave a series of popular lectures — replete with exciting demonstrations — that were eagerly written up in the local newspapers.

"An electric light sufficiently strong to cast a shadow of the blaze of ordinary gas was shown to the satisfaction of all present," read a Dec. 1875 story in the Daily Alta California.

In 1874 Father Neri received a machine that would turn his private demonstrations into a public utility: a magneto-electric machine. The thrilling device from Paris was called "the most valuable electrical apparatus to be found on the Coast."

"Fr. Neri amplified the machine's magnets by running an electric current to them from the storage battery he had developed," USF historian Alan Ziajka writes in Lighting the City, Lighting the World: A History of the Sciences at the University of San Francisco. "He connected the machine to a 'lighthouse,' which was positioned on the roof of St. Ignatius College."

And then on July 4, 1876, he lit up San Francisco's streets for the first time.

In the month that followed, Father Neri put on twice-weekly demonstrations with his electric lights at the Mechanics' Pavilion on Market St. On August 16, improvements made to his original electric lights were so impressive they made the Daily Alta California.

"The current was very steady, and the light very strong," it wrote, "so much so that it was impossible to look at." It was a "complete success."

San Franciscans, ever on the vanguard of change, quickly went to work lighting the city. Three years before New York City's streets were lit by Edison, the California Electric Light Company opened a power station next door to St. Ignatius. The station provided electricity to San Francisco's first electric street lamps in 1879 and, by year's end, to the Palace Hotel and California Theater. What began as an experiment by a Jesuit priest had transformed the city.

San Francisco, in a few short years, was illuminated.