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Jan 1, 1185
Electricity
Earliest written record of a windmill's existence in England is a rental note for a mill in Weedly, Yorkshire dated 1185. -
Jan 1, 1340
Windwill
First windmills in Holland used to pump water. -
Generator
Sir Issac Newton builds an electric generator consisting of a rotating glass sphere. The same year, F. Hawksbee improves the design by using a metal chain to capture the electricity generated by friction -
Franklin
Benjamin Franklin describes in a letter his discovery that a pointed conductor can draw off electric charge from a charge body. This is the basis for Franklin's lightning rod, even before Franklin proves the connection between electricity and lightning. Franklin installs a lighting rod on his home in 1749. -
Charcoal
Humphrey Davy uses a high-powered battery to induce a bright light between two strips of charcoal 10 c, (4 in.) apart, creating the first arc light -
Let there be light!
The first practical incandescent light bulb. Edison and his team of researchers in Edison's laboratory in Menlo Park, N.J., tested more than 3,000 designs for bulbs between 1878 and 1880. -
Long distance
Nikola Tesla develops A.C. (alternate current) generators enabling electricity to be transmitted longer distances. The first plant is built on the Willamette River near Oregon City, Ore. Later that year, A.C. generators are introduced to Santa Barbara, Visalia, Pasadena and Highgrove hydroelectric plants. -
Cars too?!
New battery from Toshiba recharges 80 percent in a minute. Electric vehicles could recharge faster than a hydrogen fill-up. -
Nuclear Power
Nuclear power accounts for about 20 percent of the total electricity generated in the United States, an amount comparable to all the electricity used in California,Texas and New York, our three most populous (having the most people) states. -
OPD
General Electric, which jumped into the wind and solar energy business a few years ago and launched a whole initiative - Ecomagination - to pursue greener technologies, has now dipped its toes into the power of the cold oceans with a loan and equity position with Ocean Power Delivery (OPD) of Scotland
