Hydropower, for example, marked several milestones between 18 in Oregon, Colorado, Croatia (where the first complete multiphase AC system was demonstrated in 1895), at Niagara Falls, and in Japan.

Department of EnergyĪdvances in alternating-current (AC) technology opened up new realms for power generation (see sidebar “Tesla and the War of the Currents”). Thomas Edison in September 1882 achieved his vision of a full-scale central power station with a system of conductors to distribute electricity to end-users in the high-profile business district in New York City.

Eventually, Thomas Edison invented a less powerful incandescent lamp in 1879, and in September 1882-only a month before the inaugural issue of POWER magazine was published-he established a central generating station at Pearl Street (Figure 1) in lower Manhattan.ġ. Brush had developed and begun selling the most reliable dynamo design to that point, and a host of forward thinkers were actively exploring the promise of large-scale electricity distribution. Varley nearly simultaneously devised the “self-exciting dynamo-electric generator.” Perhaps the most important improvement then arrived in 1870, when a Belgian inventor, Zenobe Gramme, devised a dynamo that produced a steady DC source well-suited to powering motors-a discovery that generated a burst of enthusiasm about electricity’s potential to light and power the world.īy 1877-as the streets of many cities across the world were being lit up by arc lighting (but not ordinary rooms because arc lights were still blindingly bright)-Ohio-based Charles F. In 1867, Werner von Siemens, Charles Wheatstone, and S.A. Antonio Pacinotti improved it to provide continuous direct-current (DC) power by 1860. Invention of the first rudimentary dynamo is credited to Frenchman Hippolyte Pixii in 1832. In 1820, in arguably the most pivotal contribution to modern power systems, Michael Faraday and Joseph Henry invented a primitive electric motor, and in 1831, documented that an electric current can be produced in a wire moving near a magnet-demonstrating the principle of the generator. That development is said to have inspired Benjamin Franklin’s famous experiments, as well as the invention of the battery by Italy’s Alessandro Volta in 1800, Humphry Davy’s first effective “arc lamp” in 1808, and in 1820, Hans Christian Oersted’s demonstration of the relationship between electricity and magnetism. Many accounts begin power’s story at the demonstration of electric conduction by Englishman Stephen Gray, which led to the 1740 invention of glass friction generators in Leyden, Germany.

The history of power generation is long and convoluted, marked by myriad technological milestones, conceptual and technical, from hundreds of contributors. These are some of the events that have shaped both the history of power and the history of POWER. During its 140-year history, the magazine’s pages have reflected the fast-changing evolution of the technologies and markets that characterize the world’s power sector. POWER magazine was launched in 1882, just as the world was beginning to grasp the implications of a new, versatile form of energy: electricity.

Steam engine inventor status quo