Kankakee, Illinois, June 20, 1949. Here we see representatives from General Electric along with the Mayors from Kankakee, Champaign, Decatur, Centralia and Joliet, Illinois watching as the G.E. representatives demonstrate the benefits and operation of one the new mercury vapor street lights that are being installed in downtown Kankakee.

The new mercury vapor lamps provide a blue-white light almost twice as bright as compared to the more yellowish colored light that was emitted by the previous downtown streetlights. The older lights had been installed in the 1920s, replacing the units that dated from the 1880s and 1890s. The earliest electric streetlights installed in the downtown area was back in 1886, when lamps were suspended from cables strung above street intersections. These were mainly located in the busy downtown area. Even earlier, in the 1870s, lighting was provided using widely scattered street lamps that burned kerosene. Kankakee's lamplighter, Charles Heil, visited every lamp twice each night — once to light it, and once to extinguish it.