The modern world runs on electricity. This subatomic movement of electrons between atoms crisscrosses along millions of miles of transmission and distribution lines throughout the U.S., powering everything from our cars to our toasters. Although humans have been witness to electricity’s awesome power in the form of lightning since time immemorial, scientists have only truly probed the nature of electricity in the last few centuries — and completely transformed society in the process. These eight facts explore the history of electricity, how it's integrated into our everyday lives, and what the future of this vital resource holds.
Human Study of Electricity Goes Back to the Seventh Century BCE
Although electricity powers many modern inventions, the concept of electricity is an old one. The Greek thinker Thales of Miletus experimented around 600 BCE with static electricity by rubbing an amber (known in Greek as elektron) against hemp or cat fur and noting the attractive forces produced against materials such as dust. Today, scientists call the phenomenon of friction causing a differential charge between objects the “triboelectric effect.” After Thales’ time, electricity remained largely a curiosity until electrostatic experiments made a comeback in the 17th century, when Isaac Newton’s onetime lab assistant Francis Hauksbee created an “electrostatic engine” and reignited interest in a hair-raising marvel that had fascinated the Greeks so many centuries ago.
Benjamin Franklin Coined the Term “Battery”
Benjamin Franklin is a towering figure in American history, but his revolutionary efforts are rivaled by his extensive contributions to the study of electricity. Of course, Franklin’s most “electrifying” episode is his famous kite-flying adventure (though the kite was never struck by lightning, and only picked up ambient electric charge from a passing storm; some historians have even questioned whether the experiment ever actually happened). Franklin’s interest in electricity far exceeded this well-known experiment, however. He helped develop the idea of positive and negative charge as it relates to “electric fire,” as he called it. He also coined the term “battery” to describe a group of connected Leyden jars, a kind of 18th-century proto-capacitor (true batteries didn’t arrive until the early 19th century). Similar to how military artillery functions together to form a battery, so too did these individual Leyden jars, working together, attain a greater electric charge.
The U.S. Electric Grid Is the Largest Machine in the World
The world is full of some truly massive machines (ever laid eyes on NASA’s rocket-ferrying crawler-transporter?), but none comes even close to the largest machine in the world — the U.S. electric grid. With the creation of the first U.S. power station on September 4, 1882, the country quickly electrified, and stations popped up throughout cities and suburbs. But it wasn’t until 1967 that these power stations became truly interconnected. Thomas Edison’s first New York power plant, Pearl Street Station, initially powered only 400 lamps and served a measly 82 customers. Today, the U.S. electric grid actually contains three self-contained grids — the eastern, western, and Texas interconnections — composed of 7,300 power stations that service more than 100 million American homes. That’s a pretty impressive expansion from Edison's initial 400 lamps.
The Electricity In Your Home Was Generated Milliseconds Ago
Although the U.S. grid has incredible power generation capacity, the ability to store that energy is less robust. Although engineers are designing ways to store energy (especially renewable energy for when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow), most electricity is generated on demand, meaning the power flooding your home was likely generated many miles away only milliseconds ago.
In many cases, electricity isn’t generated directly, but is instead a secondary energy source. Primary energy sources include things like coal, natural gas, wind, and nuclear fission, which create steam that turns turbines or manipulate turbines directly (in the case of wind). These turbines use the underlying principle of electromagnetic induction, which transforms kinetic energy into electrical energy. So more likely than not, the light filling your room or powering your television was steam only milliseconds ago.
The Human Body Contains Electricity
Although electricity makes the artifice of our technological world possible, it’s also an important biological process. For example, electric fish (think electric eels) motivated early electrical pioneers such as Italian inventors Alessandro Volta and Luigi Galvani to investigate both biological electricity as well as the means to create it artificially. In the human body, electricity is the main ingredient of the nervous system, which sends electrical impulses throughout the body, traveling between 156 and 270 miles per hour. Our very cells are purposefully designed to transfer electricity and it’s vital to our health that they do so, as our very heartbeats require electrical impulses to time them correctly. In fact, all living things produce an electric field.
There Are Roughly 8 Million Lightning Strikes on Earth Every Day
Without a doubt, humanity’s very first shocking run-in with electricity likely happened observing lightning during a storm. Lightning forms when the attraction between the negative charge in the bottom of a cumulonimbus cloud and the positive charge on the ground becomes so great that they connect in an explosive display of electricity. Although people typically think of lightning striking the ground, these impressive arcs of light can also dance within a cloud or between two clouds as well. Lightning strikes can travel around 270,000 miles per hour while briefly superheating the surrounding air to a blistering 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit — five times hotter than the sun. Although some 40 million lightning strikes hit the U.S. every year (and roughly 8 million lightning strikes happen around the world per day), the chances of getting struck by lightning are roughly one in a million.
The First Electric Car Was Invented in the 1870s
Electric cars aren’t some new fad. In fact, the first EVs were invented during the dawn of the automobile itself in the mid-1800s. Most point to Scottish inventor Robert Anderson as the first person to build an electric car, in 1832, though its crude design made an impractical replacement for the reliable horse and buggy. By the end of the 19th century, U.S. inventors including Iowa’s William Morrison had begun developing more reliable electric cars, and about one-third of all vehicles on the road were electric in that era. Although electric vehicles had distinct advantages over gasoline cars as they were quiet and pollutant-free, the discovery of oil in Texas spelled the end of the U.S.’s short-lived electric car era. It would be decades later, during the midst of a climate crisis largely perpetuated by those early EVs’ gas-guzzling competitors, that electric cars would once again rise in popularity.
Electricity Could One Day Come From Artificial Suns
Glimpsing the future of electricity on Earth also means doing a little bit of stargazing. For nearly a century, scientists have investigated the energy-producing physics that power the sun and all other stars in the known universe. This process, known as nuclear fusion (not to be confused with fission, which powers current nuclear reactors), occurs when two light elements, such as hydrogen or helium, fuse together under immense heat and pressure, which produces tremendous amounts of energy. In December 2022, scientists for the first time produced more energy than they put into a fusion system, a nuclear milestone known as “ignition.” In 2025, an international collaboration of universities and governments hopes to ignite the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) megaproject, which will essentially create electricity via an artificial, terrestrial-bound sun.
If only Thales could see us now.