Around 600 B.C., the ancient Greeks figured out how to generate electricity. In 1750, a Dutch man discovered how to store it in a primitive battery. In the 1880s, Nikola Tesla figured out how to transmit alternating current electricity; Thomas Edison figured out how to transmit direct current. We transitioned from visible, mechanical technologies powered by horse and human muscle, to steam and hydropower, then electromagnetic technologieswhose power is mostly invisible. Life on Earth changed, rapidly.
In urban areas, investors installed generators, substations, transformers, power lines and meters to deliver electricity to industrial, commercial and residential customersand for street lights. In rural areas, governments funded publicly-owned utilities.[1]
With reliable electricity, manufacturers built factories. They mass-produced batteries, motors and lightbulbs. Investors created intercontinental radio "the wireless." Electronic inventions flourished for the home and the military: manufacturers made refrigerators, washing machines, blenders, military radar and x-ray machines.
Few people considered the environmental consequences of electricity or mining or burning its fossil fuels.
Here is a composite of over 400 images of the world's electric grid in April, 2009:
After World War II, most Western homes got a landline telephone. Inventors electrified everything: dryers, water heaters, dishwashers, vacuum cleaners, shoe store x-rays (to ensure a good fit), black and white televisions, record players, microwave ovens, typewriters, guitars, pianos, hair curlers, hair dryers, air conditioners, sewing machines, alarm clocks, toothbrushes, cardiac pacemakers and tape recorders.
Governments built infrastructure for trucks, trains and planes to ship raw materials and final products. We built suburbs, bought automobiles and drove to work and stores. We put radios and air conditioners in our cars. We built cities in desertsplaces that without air conditioning had only been sparsely inhabited before.
By the mid 1950s, few of us who had grown accustomed to electricity still knew how to grow or preserve food, pump water, light a dark room or heat or cool a home without electricity.
In the 1960s, we began extracting elements like cerium. First found in Sweden, cerium makes color TV possible. We put TVs in our kitchens, bedrooms, bathrooms and classrooms.
Electricity use continues to drive economic growth.[2] Economic growth increases electricity consumption [3] and human population.
While technology's energy and extraction demands threaten environmental stability and our survival, we don't see ecological harm when we use our computers. We don't see that nearly two billion people lack access to adequate sanitation, and nearly one billion do not have electricity. We don't see the ways that extractions and energy use impact their communities. Call these invisible imbalances between nature and technology.
A brief history of telecommunications
Sweden launched the first fully automated mobile phone system in 1956. The University of Hawaii installed the first wireless computer network in 1970. Email was introduced in 1972. In the 1980s, manufacturers offered (and consumers bought) word processors, answering machines, cordless phones and VHS players.
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