Electricity

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ELECTRICITY

During the last decades of the nineteenth century, electricity brought Europeans a wide variety of innovations that ultimately improved the lives of most people. Among other things, electricity made possible the undersea cable, the electro-magnetic telegraph, and the telephone. It gradually transformed industry, transportation, and for many people, home life.

Although some awareness of electricity had existed as far back in time as classical Greece and the Renaissance, in the eighteenth century observations and discoveries, including those of Benjamin Franklin, became more systematic. In 1820 Hans Oersted (1777–1851), a Danish physicist, noted that a strong current moving through a wire could cause a compass to move, and that currents were mutually attractive if they moved in the same direction but had the opposite effect if they moved in different directions. Oersted's English colleague Michael Faraday (1791–1867) investigated the effects of electromagnetism, discoveries that later influenced the development of electric generators and transformers. In 1866 Werner von Siemens (1816–1892), a German, invented the first dynamo, which made possible the production of great amounts of electrical energy. In 1879 the American Thomas Edison (1847–1931) invented the incandescent electric lamp. Soon after, the development of electric alternators and transformers and improvements in cable and insulation made it possible for electric power to be generated and diffused. The first electrical power stations started up in 1881. By the end of the century, electric streetlights made it easier to find one's way around town at night, and electric tramways could be found in a number of cities. Still, in much of Europe electricity remained a luxury identified with grand hotels, department stores, and wealthy neighborhoods.

European economic growth and particularly industry benefited from electricity during the last two decades of the nineteenth century, in part because electric power could be carried quite easily, replacing water power, coal, and gas in many industries, including textiles, steel, and construction. German industries in particular benefited early on from the transformation effected by electricity. Gradually in many European countries, particularly in western Europe, electric sewing machines, refrigerators, fans, and vacuum cleaners were available to those who could afford them.

The first electric lights were not always located in cities: often the pioneers in the field were factories, as was the case with the Finlayson factory in Tampare, Finland, in 1882 and in Resita, Romania, in a metallurgical factory that same year. As a rule, the new lighting system was first tried out in the smaller factories before bids were extended to large cities. One of the first initiatives of the kind occurred in Hungary. Following the successful modernization of corn mills, in 1878 a young engineer, Károly Zipernowsky, was hired by the Ganz company in Budapest to carry out research with a view toward laying the foundations of an electrotechnological industry in central Europe. However, as occurred in many cities, the Budapest municipality initially rejected the idea of switching from gas to electric lights, reluctant to allocate public money to a technological innovation that remained rather mysterious. The Ganz company nevertheless managed to take the market of public lighting, prevailing over Edison's company (all the more so, as Zipernowsky and his colleagues had made the technological choice of alternating current, which guaranteed more efficient transport). Thanks to its system Ganz eventually served Vienna, Innsbruck, Milan, Turin, Cologne, Lucerne, Sofia, Belgrade, and Stockholm as well as Budapest. In 1906, 44 percent of the electric power produced in Hungary was used for lighting, with Budapest accounting for 60 percent of the electric power produced. In Bohemia, Prague had the largest thermo-electric power plant in the country (coal was very cheap). Setting aside these two countries, use of electric power to provide lighting was not as prevalent in central European nations as it was in western Europe. However, one must consider that a plant providing a city with power used essentially for lighting is in fact underused (it runs at only 10 to 20 percent of its full capacity); to make electric power profitable, providers either had to serve only those areas with high purchasing power or find new markets, such as industry or public transports.

Clearly in these early years electric power was more costly than gas, but in 1882 its Russian advocates promoted it by pointing out that it burned regularly, gave off less heat, did not pollute the air, and did not emit a whizzing sound. All these arguments were used in European cities, especially with regard to gas-powered lights (or those burning kerosene or oil, two other fuels used to provide light in urban areas). In public places such as theaters, which were flooded with light, the heat and smell from lights were as a rule considered a nuisance. Thus with the spread of electric power came an enhanced sense of urban glamour, particularly in capital cities. When world exhibitions were held (for example, in Paris in 1889 and 1900), electricity demonstrated that the capital was a modern city. When Romania became an independent country after the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878, Bucharest did its best to show that it had achieved the status of European capital. In this case authorities strongly supported the first attempts to provide the city with electric lighting, and in 1882 the city accepted a proposal made by the Austrian subsidiary of an English company. However, the most prestigious installation in Europe undeniably was the illumination of Berlin, in particular that of Unter den Linden, together with that of other major thoroughfares in the city. The management of the BEW electric company (a subsidiary of the powerful industrial firm AEG) noticed the public's preference for electric lights, conducive to a livelier nightlife. And in England, the new technology was used to create a lavish show of electrical effects: for Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee in 1887, electric candelabra reproducing the colors of the rainbow and electric crowns placed on the tops of buildings lined London's streets.

Major cities provided opportunities for comparing the various lighting systems (gas versus electric power, or contrasting electric systems with one another). For example, electric arc lamps and incandescent lamps were compared. The first device made it possible to illuminate large spaces such as public gardens, parks, and squares, but its main drawback was that it was very unpleasant to the eye and could not be divided into smaller lighting units. Conversely, incandescent lamps made the new light much easier to use. At first, when cities put up arc lamps, as was done in Vienna in 1882, the near by streets that were still lit by gas lamps seemed quite dark by comparison. Arc lights were so powerful that some proposed projects involved lighting a whole city with one single source of light. Many city councils tested gas and electrical systems in nearby streets, as was done in Paris in the 1880s. Some cities chose one system over the other, while other cities allowed the two systems to exist side by side; arc lamps and gas lamps coexisted harmoniously, for example, in Berlin. In St. Petersburg in 1914, 47 percent of street lamps burned gas, 37 percent burned kerosene, and 16 percent worked on electric power. In Russia electric power faced competition from kerosene lamps rather than from gas because the country produced cheap oil in large quantities. Before the Bolshevik Revolution, most electrically powered installations were located in Moscow and St. Petersburg but also in Baku, which is surprising unless one considers the rapid expansion of this oil-producing city at the close of the nineteenth century. Finally, it must be noted that all the European capitals boomed with the "war of systems," opposing the proponents of continuous electric current (Edison, to name one), who argued that it was safe, and proponents of alternating electric current (Westing-house and Ganz), which might have resulted in city dwellers running major risks (comparable to those of lightning). The controversy died out when electric power no longer was produced inside towns but farther and farther a field, in which case alternating current became a necessity, and more particularly three-phase current.

Throughout the nineteenth century, the urban consumer had become more demanding, believing that the city must become more and more pleasant and the streets more and more illuminated. Electricity answered this desire by providing a form of lighting that was both easy to use and hygienic, and by the early twentieth century not only lights but also other electric-powered conveniences were passing from the status of a luxury to that of a basic need.