Williams The Electric Century

How the Taming of Lightning Shaped the Modern World
1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-3-319-51155-9
Verlag: Springer Nature Switzerland
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 1 - PDF Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 227 Seiten

Reihe: Popular Science

This book is about how electricity has profoundly changed the way we live, work, and play. Some twenty topics are covered, with an abundance of graphs and images to build a comprehensive picture. Each looks at the developments, and the people who initiated them, together with how one led to the next and their subsequent impact on society. Topics include electric supply, lighting through X-rays, and all those appliances that make our homes so comfortable.Most homes at the end of the twentieth century were full of electrical equipment, much of which was regarded as essential. It ran from lights, washing machines, fridges, freezers, kettles, telephones and so on, to the more subtle things such as wipers and starter motors on cars. In 1900, in all but a tiny minority of houses, there were none of these things. It is very difficult for us now to imagine a world without electrical equipment everywhere, and yet it has only taken a century. The Electric Century examines how we got from then to now.  The nineteenth is often described as the century of steam from the impact it had on employment and transport, and The Electric Century makes a similar claim as the description of the twentieth. Electricity and the equipment using it are so pervasive that they have affected every corner of modern life.





J.B. Williams got an electrical engineering degree at Imperial College, which led him into the design of electronic control and instrumentation equipment, and he became a Chartered Engineer. After working for a number of companies, including AVO/Megger and gaining seniority, he went into engineering management and later co-founded Ingenion Design Ltd to produce electronic instrumentation, exposing him to many different industries varying from washing machines to nuclear power stations.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Williams, J. B.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1;Contents;6
2;Acknowledgments;8
3;List of Figures;9
4;List of Tables;12
5;1: Introduction;13
6;2: Chaotic Beginnings;16
6.1; Notes;21
7;3: Lighting that Doesn’t Need Lighting;23
7.1; Notes;31
8;4: Streetcars, Subways, Trains and Suburbs;32
8.1; Notes;41
9;5: First You Have to Make It: The Spread of the Electricity Supply;43
9.1; Notes;54
10;6: Beginnings of Mass Production: Electric Power in Industry;56
10.1; Notes;63
11;7: Early Mass Media: Newspapers and Cinema;65
11.1; Notes;74
12;8: The Catless Miaow: Wireless Telegraphy;76
12.1; Notes;85
13;9: Healthy? Early Medical Electricity;87
13.1; Notes;95
14;10: Portable Power: Batteries;96
14.1; Notes;103
15;11: A Good Investment: Electricity Grids;105
15.1; Notes;114
16;12: Willing Servants: The Growth of Appliances in the 1930s;115
16.1; Notes;125
17;13: Blackout: War and Crisis in Electric Power Generation;127
17.1; Notes;136
18;14: Give Someone a Bell: Telephones;138
18.1; Notes;146
19;15: Horseless Carriages: Road Vehicles;148
19.1; Notes;157
20;16: Too Cheap to Meter? Nuclear Power and Beyond;159
20.1; Notes;167
21;17: Keeping it Fresh: Fridges and Freezers;169
21.1; Notes;175
22;18: Banishing Washday: Home Laundry;176
22.1; Notes;182
23;19: Going Up… or Down: Elevators and Escalators;183
23.1; Notes;190
24;20: Gadgets: Small Household Appliances;192
24.1; Notes;198
25;21: Freedom of the House: Central Heating and Air Conditioning;200
25.1; Notes;208
26;22: Power Tools and the DIY Revolution;210
26.1; Notes;216
27;23: The Electric Century;217
27.1; Notes;220
28;Bibliography;221
29;Index;224