Electricity And Its Origins
Electricity, as we all know is an extremely diverse and flexible energy form. It has been adapted over the last 200 or so years to the point where we can now use it for pretty much anything. One of the first applications of electrical power that was publicly available was LED lighting when the first incandescent light bulb was invented in the 1870s.
The introduction of electricity to society has introduced some new household hazards; however it did eradicate some of the old ones like the naked flames of the gas lighting that was widely used up until that point.
The Joule heating effect that is used in light bulbs is also used in electric heating. Electric heating, although easily controllable and versatile, could be deemed wasteful as heat has already been used to create this electricity in power stations.
Denmark (among a few other countries) has issued a new law restricting electric heating use in new buildings, if allowed at all. As well as heating, electricity provides a hugely beneficial source of refrigeration. As temperatures get hotter, the demand for air conditioning gets higher, increasing the amount of energy used, and so climate change is increasing in a snowball effect.
Electricity is of course used in telecommunication. The electrical telegraph was one of the earliest applications that electricity was used for, commercially demonstrated by Crooke and Wheatstone in 1837.
In the 1860s, electricity had made global communication possible with the first intercontinental telegraph systems (this was of course before the telephone) and then the first transatlantic ones. Since then, satellite communication and optical fibre have taken a share of the communications market, but electricity is sure to remain a vital part of the process.
Electromagnetism is best seen in an electric motor, one of the cleanest sources of motive power. A stationary motor like a winch can easily be powered by a stationary external power source, but a moving motor like that of an electric vehicle must carry a power source with it, unless it works using a pantograph like some modern trains.
Perhaps the most important invention of the 1900s is the transistor. It is a vital part of all modern electrical circuits and a modern integrated circuit may contain several billion miniaturised transistors in a region of only a few centimetres squared.