It was as recently as 140 years ago that our forebears’ lives were scarcely touched by electricity, bar the occasional lightning strike in a summer thunderstorm. Back then lighting, heating and cooking all entailed a naked flame, whether it emanated from a source fuelled by wood, coal, oil or gas and refrigeration for the lucky few was by ice in the “Ice Box”. Nineteenth century scientists would unlock the secrets of electricity and magnetism, which would lead the way for electricity to be harnessed for the benefit of Mankind; if you like the Second Industrial Revolution.
Electricity has created our modern world and the first fruit of its use was the electric telegraph, the precursor of the telephone and the internet, which from the 1840’s would enable a message, in Morse code, to be sent along a wire; hence the saying “to send a wire”. Lighting by electricity would be the next goal and by the 1870’s the race was on to perfect the incandescent light bulb. It was Thomas Edison who would take the plaudits but it was in fact Joseph Swan who would beat him to it and they would later come to an agreement to form a company, in 1883, with “Ediswan” as its trade mark.
Power generation, whereby a power station could supply electricity to a neighbourhood, was Edison’s aim and he heavily invested his time and money in developing Direct Current (DC) technology, however he would have a keen competitor in George Westinghouse who championed Alternating...
