What is the passage mainly about?

How city streets went from carried lanterns to gas lamps and then to electric light. (Each paragraph is one stage of the same change, and the last one closes it with electricity.)

According to the passage, what did some towns order every household to do?

Hang a lamp by its door on winter nights. (The first paragraph states the rule directly. Paying a boy with a torch was a private choice, not an order.)

In this passage, a "lantern" is

a light you carry, with the flame held inside a case (It is what a person carried when going out at night, before any street had lamps of its own.)

Why did electricity end the lamplighter's work?

One switch could light a whole street, so nobody had to walk it. (The last sentence describes a person who never left the room lighting a whole street. If nobody walks the route, the job is gone.)

The First Street Lights: Level 1 Reading Comprehension Questions

For most of history, a city went dark at sunset. Anyone who had to go out carried a lantern, or paid a boy with a torch to walk in front of them. Some towns ordered every household to hang a lamp by its door on winter nights. The light was thin, and it ended where the house ended.

In January 1807, a street in London called Pall Mall was lit with gas. Pipes ran under the pavement, and a small flame burned at the top of each post. The light was steady, and it did not blow out. Within twenty years, gas lamps stood in cities across Europe and America.

Someone still had to walk those streets each evening with a ladder and a flame. Lamplighters had a route and a time, and people set their evenings by them. Electricity ended that work. A whole street could be lit from one switch, by a person who never left the room.

Comprehension questions