In the Limelight

Genuinely literal, and genuinely chemical. In the 1820s, English inventor Goldsworthy Gurney found that heating a block of quicklime (calcium oxide) with a very hot hydrogen-and-oxygen flame produced an intense, brilliant white light, quickly nicknamed "limelight." Scottish engineer Thomas Drummond adapted it as a surveying tool soon after, but theatres saw its real potential: from 1837, when it was first used to light a stage at Covent Garden, limelight let stage crews focus a bright beam directly on a specific performer at the front and centre of the stage. Being "in the limelight" meant literally standing in that beam, the unmistakable centre of the audience's attention, long before electric spotlights replaced the technology by the century's end.