4 ms·

It probably wasn’t that useful on day one. Took a while to get a lot of products out there that required electricity.

• jonplackett 4y ago
  I mean, lighting was kind of a killer app
  • lbebber 4y ago
    We still refer to the electricity bill as the “light bill” in Brazil.
    • Claude_Shannon 4y ago
      Same in Poland
    • martinjacobd 4y ago
      I'm an American, and this is what my mother calls it, though I call it the electric bill.
  • gpm 4y ago
    If I think of everything I use electricity for these days, lighting* is pretty far down the list of usefulness. The sun can fill 80% of my lighting needs, giving up on the 20% really doesn't seem like it would be that painful. I actually thought the list of items in the ad in the article was far more convincing than lighting as a use case. Today my list of more important use cases would include things like long distance communication, refrigeration, transportation*, cooking/manufacturing, computing, data storage, small cameras, medical uses*... except in so far as light is how I use electricity to make light for information transfer purposes. Something like e-ink would be an adequate substitute though. * ICE engines do fill a lot of this niche, but not all of it. Subways, elevators, and the like are made much better via electricity. ** Imaging devices especially come to mind
    • totoglazer 4y ago
      I think you massively underestimate how annoying not being able to see after dark is.
    • kayodelycaon 4y ago
      Where do you live? For half the year, we have less than 12 hours of sunlight. Prior to electricity, humanity has spent a lot of time and effort to have light past sundown.
  • julienfr112 4y ago
    and electric motors.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
• Falkon1313 4y ago
  And there were likely multiple competing and incompatible formats in the early days. Utility is greatly reduced when some of the stuff you want won't work with other stuff.
  • cfn 4y ago
    Yes, that I recall reading about, there were even competing DC grids and AC grids. I think Edison's was DC.
    • samtho 4y ago
      Edison's was DC. He hated A/C and did public demonstrations of killing animals with A/C just to “prove” how dangerous it was. The Current Wars was a very interesting blip in history, and ultimately Tesla and Westinghouse won with A/C because of its ability travel over longer distances with minimal loss, the fact that minor variations in frequency can be used to determine current the load/demand ratio (allowing power plants to respond to load changes), and it’s voltage can be easily stepped up or down by passive devices (transformer).
      • cfn 4y ago
        That's exactly it, thaks for providing the missing context. As a youngster, I was a big fan of Edison and read a lot about him back then.