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David Melville
David Melville received a patent for his apparatus for making coal gas. Coal gas was used for street lighting. -
Warren De la Rue
Warren De la Rue encloses a platinum coil in an evacuated glass tube and passes electricity through it in the first recorded attempt to produce an incandescent lamp. -
Jacob Perkins
Jacob Perkins invents a radiator for use with hot water central heating. -
William Robert Grove
William Robert Grove succeeds in lighting an auditorium with expensive incandescent lamps that use platinum coils in inverted glasses sealed with water. -
Rudolf Clausius
Rudolf Clausius discovers the first statement of the second law of thermodynamics, restated by Clausius in 1865 as "entropy always increases in a closed system." In other words, energy in a closed system will change toward heat and disorder. -
Pierre Curie
Pierre Curie discovers the piezoelectric effect that certain substances produce and electric current as a result of pressure on them. -
Magnus Volks
the fist elcectric railway opened on Brighton seafront, built by electrical engenieer magnus Volks. The Volks Railway, built just for plasure rides, is one mile long and still runs during the summer season -
Heinrich Hertz
Heinrich Hertz produced and detected alectric waves in the atmosphere. -
Nikola Tesla
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 -
Charles Proteus Steinmetz
Charles Proteus Steinmetz warns in Future of Electricity about air pollution from burning coal and water pollution from uncontrolled sewage disposal into rivers.
