In 1876, the Russian electrical engineer Pavel Yablochkov invented the Yablochkov candle, an early type of electric arc lamp, in Paris. The device used two parallel carbon rods separated by porcelain clay that burned away at equal rates, producing a bright, steady electric light without the need for complex regulation mechanisms. First demonstrated at the Avenue de l'Opera in Paris, the Yablochkov candle was widely adopted for street lighting in Paris, London, and other major cities in the late 1870s, predating Edison's incandescent lamp by several years.

The Yablochkov candle's dramatic appearance on the Avenue de l'Opera, one of the most famous streets in world literature through the works of Balzac, Zola, and Proust, symbolized the penetration of electrical light into the heart of European literary culture. The device's name, which metaphorically linked electric light to the traditional candle, illustrated how new technologies are understood through familiar literary and cultural frames. The brief reign of the Yablochkov candle before Edison's incandescent bulb also provided a literary metaphor for the transience of technological progress, the way each innovation illuminates and then is extinguished by the next.