Oct

24

Grok and I have produced this summary of the growth of the electric utilities industry in the United States from 1910 to 1930. [Click on chart for full view.]

Bud Conrad comments:

Not sure what you take from this data. Electrification was probably more important than AI. Its growth rate was big at first in %, but slowed. Recessions were big downturns. What do you apply to today?

Steve Ellison writes:

My grandmother was a telephone operator in the 1920s. It was a high-tech industry at the time.

Carder Dimitroff clarifies:

The definition of an "electric utility" changed over time.

Big Al suggests:

An excellent series available on Prime:

Shock and Awe: The Story of Electricity

Professor Jim Al-Khalili tells the electrifying story of our quest to master nature's most mysterious force: electricity.

Books I haven't read yet, which get lots of stars:

The Power Makers: Steam, Electricity, and the Men Who Invented Modern America

The power revolution is not a tale of machines, however, but of men: inventors such as James Watt, Elihu Thomson, and Nikola Tesla; entrepreneurs such as George Westinghouse; savvy businessmen such as J.P. Morgan, Samuel Insull, and Charles Coffin of General Electric. Striding among them like a colossus is the figure of Thomas Edison, who was creative genius and business visionary at once.

Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World

In the final decades of the nineteenth century, three brilliant and visionary titans of America’s Gilded Age—Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, and George Westinghouse—battled bitterly as each vied to create a vast and powerful electrical empire. In Empires of Light, historian Jill Jonnes portrays this extraordinary trio and their riveting and ruthless world of cutting-edge science, invention, intrigue, money, death, and hard-eyed Wall Street millionaires.


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