One lightning bolt has enough electricity to service 200 000 homes.
First Lighthouse to use electricity - Statue of Liberty (1886)
In 1800 Count Alassandro Volta made the "voltaic pile", a battery. His experiments,along with Luigi Galvani, applying electricity to frogs legs and making them jump when touched by an electric wire prompted Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley to write FRANKENSTEIN in 1818.
In 1957 a battery was discovered in Bagdad. It was made by the Parthians, who ruled Bagdad from 250 B.C.E. to 224 C.E., and was used to electroplate silver.
The Brooklyn Bridge was the first bridge to be lit using electricity.
Every year, American homes waste more than $13 billion in energy - an average of $150 per family.
More than 10,000 homes in the United States are powered entirely by solar energy.
The electric chair was invented by a dentist.
Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) was one of the most well known inventors of all time with 1093 patents
During the whole of his life, Edison received only three months of formal schooling, and was dismissed from school as being retarded.
The Livermore Centennial Light was manufactured in 1901 by the Shelby Electric Company. It is a hand-blown bulb with a carbon filament. It uses approximately 4 watts of electricity. The bulb has been left burning continuously in the firehouse as a night light over the fire trucks since 1901.
Electrocution is one of the top five causes of workplace deaths.
The first use of water to generate electricity was in 1882 on the Fox river, in the USA, which produced enough power to light two paper mills and a house.
10 percent of total US generating capacity is fueled by natural gas, about the same as hydropower. More than half of US capacity is coal-fired, with nuclear accounting for 20 percent.
$212 billion in electrical bills paid by US customers each year.
An electric oven uses one kilowatt-hour of electricity in about 20 minutes, but one kilowatt-hour will power a TV for 3 hours, run a 100-watt bulb for 12 hours, and keep an electric clock ticking for 3 months.
An Electric eel can produce an electric shock of up to 650 volts at one ampere.
Currents of approximately 0.2 A are potentially fatal, because they can make the heart fibrillate, or beat in an uncontrolled manner.
Early in their history, Christmas lights were so expensive that they were more commonly rented than sold.
An electrically lighted tree was a status symbol in the early 1900s.
A 100 watt modern light bulb emits about 1600 lumens, while a single flame oil lamp form the 1800s emitted about 2400 lumens.
A generator is a device that converts mechanical energy into electrical energy. The process is based on the relationship between magnetism and electricity.
The cost of electricity is going up (both in dollars and in environmental and health impacts) and it doesn't show any signs of doing otherwise.
About half of the energy in the American grid is coal generated.
Electric energy is an intermediate form of energy. It is produced in thermal power stations (where fuel oil, gas, coal, biomass, etc. are burnt), in hydroelectric power stations and nuclear power stations. Smaller quantities are produced by wind, photovoltaic solar panels, sea tides, etc.
When electricity was first introduced into the domestic environment it was primarily for lighting.
Demand for electricity grows with great rapidity as a nation modernises and its economy develops. The United States showed a 12% increase in demand during each year of the first three decades of the twentieth century.
In the late-1800s, Nikola Tesla pioneered the generation, transmission, and use of alternating current (AC) electricity, which can be transmitted over much greater distances than direct current. Tesla's inventions used electricity to bring indoor lighting to our homes and to power industrial machines.
Electricity is a general term that encompasses a variety of phenomena resulting from the presence and flow of electric charge.
Before electricity generation began over 100 years ago, houses were lit with kerosene lamps, food was cooled in iceboxes, and rooms were warmed by wood-burning or coal-burning stoves.
Demand for solar electric energy has consistently grown by 20-25% per year over the past 20 years.
A battery produces electricity using two different metals in a chemical solution. A chemical reaction between the metals and the chemicals frees more electrons in one metal than in the other.
There are several advantages and disadvantages to hydro electric energy production. One big advantage is that energy is free once the dam is built.
In 1882 water was used to electrify two paper mills and a house on the Fox River. This was the first application of hydro electric energy.
Electricity is by no means a purely human invention, and may be observed in several forms in nature, a prominent manifestation of which is lightning.
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