Electric light and the grid
Cities are lit at night, and a general-purpose energy network is built.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 16 years
- Known to
- ± 1 year
- Era
- Industrial, Holocene
Edison's practical incandescent lamp of 1879 and his Pearl Street generating station of 1882 are less important than what follows: the alternating-current system championed by Tesla and Westinghouse wins the current wars of the 1890s because it can be transformed to high voltage and transmitted far. That makes electricity a shared utility rather than an on-site generator, and it separates where power is made from where it is used.