The Electrification of the World

1882 CE — North America, United States

Today: New York City (Pearl Street Station)

Thomas Edison switched on a generating station in lower Manhattan and began selling electricity as a utility — not a curiosity but infrastructure. Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse then proved alternating current could carry power across long distances, and the grid followed. Electric light detached human activity from the sun, and electric motors put power wherever it was needed rather than beside the steam engine. It became the substrate on which the later technologies of the modern world quietly run.

Worth knowing: Edison and Westinghouse fought a public war over which current was safer, and Edison's camp publicly electrocuted animals to discredit alternating current — and helped design the electric chair to associate his rival's system with death. Tesla's current won anyway.

Pattern: Labor displacement — A new technology destroys and creates work faster than institutions and people can adapt, producing dislocation and backlash.

Entry 200 of 240 in Precedent, a walk through the whole human story in order.