Electricity And Its Origins
Electricity has become something we rely on to live our lives, but it was by no means an overnight discovery. Over the last two hundred years it has developed from a scientific phenomenon to part of everyday life. One of the first applications of electricity was the first incandescent light bulb in around 1870.
The electric overhaul of society obviously brought many fresh new dangers with it, but it eliminated some of the old ones, like the naked flames of gas lighting that was commonly used in homes and factories then.
The Joule heating effect that can be found in light bulbs is also present in electric heating. Electric heating has been thought of as wasteful in the past because in order to create that heat energy, heat has already been used in the 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.
Telecommunication is of course another area dependent upon electricity; in fact the electrical telegraph was one of the first successful applications of electricity.
Global communication was made possible in the 1860s with the invention of intercontinental telegraph systems, followed shortly by a transatlantic telegraph system. More recently, fibre optics and satellite communication have taken a large share of the communications market, but without electricity both would be rendered useless.
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.
Arguably the most important invention of the 1900s, the transistor is an essential part of every modern electrical circuit. It is used to amplify or split electronic currents and a modern circuit could contain billions of very small transistors in only a few square centimetres.