Blanche Kameny !

Lillian Blanche Kameny

Dr. Peters

ENGL 134

22 October 2018

The History of Electricity

What is electricity? For an electrical engineer, electricity is about the application of

electricity in electronics, computer engineering, or power engineering. For a physicist, electricity

is about the movement of electrons and other natural phenomena like electric fields, currents, and

magnetic fields. But to the common person, electricity is simply a way to power on a light, or

charge your phone—it’s simply an energy source for other objects. The U.S. Energy Information

Administration writes that “electricity is both a basic part of nature and one of the most widely

used forms of energy.”

To understand the development of electricity in America, the foundations for it—other

energy sources like fire, water, coal, etc.—must be understood first. The earliest known usage of

energy, in the form of “controlled use of fire for warmth and cooking,” (Smil 26) may have

occurred as early as 1.9 million years ago. However, it is accepted that around 30,000-20,000

years ago, the use of fire was widespread (Smil 26). Wood, from which fire was borne, was used

as the primary source of energy up until 300-400 years ago (Nersesian 47). The use of fire as an

energy source, to cook and provide shelter, allowed Homo sapiens to evolve and eventually

develop—many generations later—complex societies filled with the need for new technology.

The jump from forging to agriculture during the pre-industrial age resulted in magnificent

inventions like the tilt-hammer, which was powered by a new form of energy—water (Smil,
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127-128). While coal was first mined in Belgium in 1113 (Smil 229), it wasn’t until around the

1620’s-50’s that use of coal surpassed the use of wood as a source of heat in Britain (Smil 233).

In fact, “coal dominated (more than 75%) the country’s energy use for 250 years, much longer

than in any other country” (Smil 233).

In the first half of the nineteenth century, coal was used widespread in the United States

for things like engines in trains and steamships, and coal usage peaked during the twentieth

century, in 1910, at 60 percent (Nersesian 80; French 39-40). One of the great turning points in

America, which caused the shift from coal to oil, was President Eisenhower’s development of an

interstate highway system, and therefore the shift from coal-powered steam engines in trains to

diesel-powered engines in locomotives (Nersesian 81). Oil has still not completely shifted out of

U.S. energy consumption—in 2017, the U.S. produced 3.4 million-thousand barrels of crude oil

(U.S. Energy Information Administration). However, due to post-World War II industrialization,

natural gas has slowly been replacing both coal and fuel oil (Smil 280).

Electricity, in its most physical form as lightning, was tested with Benjamin Franklin’s

notable kite-and-key experiment (French 83). Franklin’s subsequent experiments concerning

electricity resulted in the following definition of electricity: “an invisible, subtle matter,

disseminated through all nature in various proportions, equally unobserved, and . . . all those

bodies to which it peculiarly adheres are alike charged with it.” (French 83). Other European

scientists, fascinated with the phenomena that was electricity, begun to experiment on their own.

Luigi Galvani used electricity on frogs’ legs which suggested electricity was an internal

phenomena, an idea that was popularized in Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein (French 84). Alessandro

Volto concluded after his own tests that, contrary to Galvani, “electricity was not an internal
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force of the body, but an external force that could be created” (French 84). The notion that

electricity was an external force resulted in a turning point concerning the study of electricity,

and paved way for famous physicists like Newton and Faraday to develop the physical rules and

proofs of electromagnetism and electrical currents. After years of thought and experimentation in

the depths of physics, it was in the late nineteenth century that Thomas Edison “began to position

electricity as a modern and miraculous power source” (Frank 96)—it was electricity as we know

it to this day.

Despite the trajectory of one form of energy replacing another, electricity will not

supersede oil. Rather, fossil fuels, like oil and coal, are combusted to produce electricity. Primary

electricity, different from electricity formed from fuel combustion, is “the use of the kinetic

energy of water… …produce electricity” (Smil 226). Thermal electricity is produced by burning

fossil fuels (oil, coal, etc.) to heat water into steam and utilizing the steam to power turbines,

which in turn produces said thermal electricity. Though electricity is not a sole energy source, it

has resulted in careers and the development of technology beyond anything coal or oil could

have led to. Lightning, generators, computers, anything electrical engineers work on—all

possible due to the movement of electrons.

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“an unspoiled place of exploitable resources where sources of energy were exceptional and

unlimited” (French 20)

“Human dependence on ever higher energy flows can be seen as an inevitable continuation of

organismic evolution.” (Smil 2)

“gas-generated electricity went from 12% of the total in 1990 to 33% by 2014, while in Japan
LNG’s share was 28% in 2010, rising to 44% in 2012 after the closure of nuclear power plants
following the Fukushima disaster” (Smil 281)

“Coal is indispensable in the generation of electricity. Nations with the greatest reliance on coal
for generating electricity are Poland (95 percent), South Africa (93 percent), China (79 percent),
Australia and Israel (77 percent), Kazakhstan and Morocco (70 percent), India (68 percent),
Czech Republic (62 percent), Greece (61 percent), and Germany and the United States (51
percent).” (Nersesian 97)

Works Cited:

https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.php?page=electricity_science

https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MCRFPUS1&f=A

Books:

Nersesian - Energy for the 21st Century

Smil - Energy and Civilization

French - When They Hid the Fire