Natural light in Minecraft PE comes from various sources. The Sun is the most apparent, but the Moon also casts its glow on the Earth! Underground, you can witness the illumination from lava and redstone ore, while in the Nether, you’ll encounter even more lava, magma blocks, and glowstone. Fun fact: brown mushrooms and dragon eggs emit a small amount of light.
MCPE also features artificial lighting. Beacons, different gates and portals, pistons, sea lanterns, torches, furnaces, trap chests, end rods, monster spawners, and brewing stands all provide light. However, nothing shines as elegantly or abundantly for many players as our block of the week: the redstone lamp in Minecraft Pocket Edition!
The redstone lamps were introduced to Minecraft in 2012 with update 1.2.1, which also brought iron golems, ocelots, stone brick slabs, and jungle biomes. They emit a light level of 15—just like fire and glowstone—but only when powered by redstone. In fact, they are crafted by surrounding a glowstone block with four pieces of red-brown dust on a crafting table.
In Minecraft Pocket Edition, redstone lamps activate under four conditions. First, there must be an adjacent active power source, such as a redstone block, daylight sensor, or redstone torch. Second, there should be a neighboring powered block that receives energy from other sources. Third, if a power comparator or repeater is connected to the lamp, and fourth, when redstone dust is applied either above or pointing towards the lamp. It will turn on instantly when activated, but will turn off after several ticks once the power is removed in Minecraft PE.
Artificial lighting has existed far longer than humans have had it. Our evolutionary ancestors knew how to illuminate areas using fires and torches over 400,000 years ago, while prehistoric people utilized primitive oil lamps to brighten their surroundings—filling shells, stones, or horns with plant or animal fat and using wicks. In some cases, particularly fatty animals were caught, killed, pierced with a wick, and then used as lamps.
At the Paris Exposition of 1878, electric lighting was installed along the Avenue de l’Opéra and at the Opéra square.
By the early 1800s, some larger cities began utilizing combustible methane gas from their sewers to power lamps—and you can still see one operating in London, on Cartington Alley near the Savoy hotel. Then came electrification in 1880, leading to the modern light bulb, which is now ubiquitous worldwide.
Electric lighting transformed how we live during this era. It allows us to be more productive in the evenings, reduces urban crime, and there’s even historical evidence suggesting it changed our sleeping patterns. People began to sleep in two phases, at night and during the day, rather than waking up about an hour later to read, visit neighbors, or pray. With the advent of electric lighting allowing us to stay awake in the evenings, we shifted instead to a system where we sleep intermittently between activities.
So next time you doze off on the couch and wake up in the middle of the night, don’t worry. Rest assured, it’s completely natural!
