Donald Linebaugh

"The Springfield Gas Machine: Illuminating Industry and Leisure, 1860s–1920s"

ABSTRACT -- Developed just after the close of the Civil War, the Springfield Gas Machine was a unique commercial and domestic gas lighting system marketed for use in homes and businesses outside of a city’s gas works. The self-contained unit was perfectly suited to accommodate an expanding rural and suburban U.S. landscape as middle- and upper-class American families were looking to find simplicity in the countryside without losing any modern comforts of the city. Industries, too, were looking for a means to operate more efficiently and implement longer work hours for various consumer operations. Perhaps more important, owners of the Springfield system could retain control of their light production during a time when corporations were reaping large benefits from their monopolistic hold over municipal gas works.

Dr. Linebaugh will explore the story of the Springfield gas machine from its invention through its replacement in the early twentieth century with less expensive and more accessible forms of lighting using electricity. His lecture will investigate how gas lighting was, for its time, a major innovation in domestic and commercial lighting, and it changed daily life and social behaviors in the late nineteenth century as the comforts of home became a reality for suburban and rural Americans.

SPEAKER -- Donald W. Linebaugh is Professor in the School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation at the University of Maryland; he served as Dean from 2018 to 2021, and previously served as Associate Dean and Director of the Historic Preservation Program at Maryland. He held faculty positions and managed research units at the University of Kentucky and the College of William and Mary from 1988 to 2004. Dr. Linebaugh has a PhD in American Studies and MA in Historical Archaeology from the College of William and Mary. Linebaugh’s research is diverse and interdisciplinary, including work on early urban centers, the history of archaeology and historic preservation, historic landscapes and the natural and cultural environment, 17th- and 18th-century plantations in the Tidewater Chesapeake, and industrial and craft/trade sites. With co-editor William Griswold, he published an edited volume on the Saugus Ironworks, Saugus Iron Works: The Roland W. Robbins Excavations 1948-1953 (National Park Service, Department of the Interior, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC) in 2011. Dr. Linebaugh’s most recent book, also edited with Dr. Griswold, is The Saratoga Campaign: Uncovering an Embattled Landscape (Univ. Press of New England, 2016). He has published numerous journal articles, book reviews, and chapters in edited volumes.

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