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The ELECTRICAL EPOCH denotes the evolutionary and revolutionay period of TIME spanning from the discovery to the exploration and utilization of the ELECTRICAL FORCE by HOMO ELECTRUS. (1n) Indeed, our human story has been forever changing since the local discovery of static ELECTRICITY, momentarily culminating in today's global ELECTRONIC COMPUTER NETWORK that is the Internet.
Attempting to trace this evolution of our ELECTRICAL knowledge over the last 2500 years, we have defined four conceptual "ages" which outline the important ELECTRICAL inventions, discoveries, and technologies of a given period of TIME. The ELECTRICAL EPOCH thus consists of PRIMITIVE, CLASSICAL, MODERN, and POST-MODERN ELECTRICAL AGES. (2n) These ages are posited as conceptually cyclical in form, and distinguish an evolution, not from worse to better, but from a beginning stage to a later stage with respect to ELECTRIFICATION. These four temporal concepts can also be used independently to describe the transformation of a specific ELECTRICAL TECHNOLOGY over TIME. For example, while an early COMPUTER such as the E.N.I.A.C. is herein considered to be developed in the POST-MODERN ELECTRICAL AGE, it may also be qualitatively classified as a primitive or classical version of the digital COMPUTER in relation to the more recent post-modern wireless palmtop COMPUTER. Overall, then, the ELECTRICAL EPOCH consists of several ELECTRICAL AGES of development which have effectively resulted in the ARTIFICIAL and VIRTUAL ELECTRICAL WORLDs we live within today. A concept first ushered in by Marshall McLuhan, (3n) these new AGEs have subsequently transformed EARTH into a "global village," (3.5n) what we herein propose constitutes a global ELECTRICAL STATE, or ELECTRICAL CIVILIZATION. What follows is a collation of several histories and timetables of ELECTRICITY which help to define the temporal scope of ELECTRIFICATION. (3.7n) Other historiographies could be added to our understanding of the context of the ELECTRICAL EPOCH, but these are not explored within this thesis. (4n) These include the distinction between eotechnic, paleotechnic, and neotechnic civilizations by Lewis Mumford, (5) and Alvin Toffler's third wave theory, including the first wave agricultural revolution from 8000 B.C.E. to 1650-1750 A.D., the second wave industrial revolution from 1750-1955 A.D., and the super-industrial third wave, from 1955 to the present day. (6) The ELECTRICAL EPOCH thus names our ELECTRICAL WORLD's trajectory, cast into TIME... |
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The earliest human experience with ELECTRICITY was most likely seeing a bolt of lightning spark across the sky in a thunderstorm. It is probable, as "at any moment- 1800 thunderstorms are raging over the face of the EARTH." (8)
And, although early humans may not have known it was ELECTRICITY in the sky, nor that it was in everything around us, they may have intuited it through their cosmology, such as the ancient Greeks and their mythical supreme god Zeus who carried a symbolic lightning bolt, and who "symbolized nature and the elements and was regarded variously as the god of the earth and the giver of fertility, the dispenser of good and evil, the giver of laws, [and] the guardian of the hearth, property, and liberty." (8.3)  Other artifacts corroborate this ELECTRICAL intuition of the ancients. For example, electric fish were known about for thousands of years, as "[p]ictures of electric rays can be seen on ancient Greek pottery; the ancient Egyptians made hieroglyphs of electric catfish; and electric eels were known to pre-Columbian civilization in South America." (8.5n) Yet still, our unraveling of this charged mystery did not begin until our ancenstors attempted to rationally understand the ELECTRICAL by experiment, invention, and discovery, thereby building a foundation for an empirical knowledge of ELECTRICITY. In so doing, a new species of human, HOMO ELECTRUS, and a new ELECTRICAL CIVILIZATION were born. of the Primitive Electrical Age: 
585 B.C.E. - The story begins when the phenomena of STATIC ELECTRICITY was first noticed by the philosopher Thales of Miletus (Ionic Greece). Thales was interested that AMBER, a fossilized form of resin made from the hardened sap of now-extinct pine and fir trees, when rubbed with a cloth, attracted bits of straw. Thales did not know why AMBER attracted objects when rubbed, but he wrote down the experiment and over centuries other people tried to understand how and why it happened. What Thales did not realize at the time was that "[b]y rubbing the AMBER, Thales gave it a property that it did not have before. We know know it to be an electric charge." (9) In the Greek language the word for AMBER is "elektron."
Also attributed to Thales was the discovery that another stone, called the LODESTONE attracted objects like AMBER, but only ones made of iron. This "magnetic stone," or MAGNET was named after the city where it was found, Magnesia, (now Turkey). Today we know it as an iron ore. (10n) For centuries, our fundamental understanding of both the magnetic attraction of LODESTONE and the electrostatic attraction in AMBER continued to remain a deep mystery to HOMO ELECTRUS. (11) Uniquely, at roughly the same time, the theory that the world was made up of ATOMS came from the philospher Leucippus, also from Miletus, and his student Democritus, in the 5th Century B.C.E. (12) 1195 C.E. - MAGNETIC compass used in Europe. (13n) 
1269 C.E. - Petrus Peregrinus (French) discovers that LODESTONE has two poles of attraction, a north pole and a south pole. (14)
1600 C.E. - William Gilbert, (English) "the Father of ELECTRICITY," writes the treatise De Magnete on MAGNETISM and suggests that the EARTH is a large MAGNET. He "found many substances that, when rubbed, behaved like AMBER. He called them "electrics." i.e. having AMBER-like properties. The force itself he called the "vis electrica," and thus our term [ELECTRICITY] was born." (15) 1678 C.E. - Otto von Guericke (German) produces the first machine to create an ELECTRIC CHARGE. (16) 1709 C.E. - Francis Hawksbee (English) creates "a primitive ELECTRIC LIGHT" machine, (17) that eventually evolved into "..today's brilliant fluorescent lamps and the blue-white mercury vapor lamps in the streets and factories [as a practical result]." (18) 1729 C.E. - Stephen Gray (English) discovers that ELECTRICITY flows, or ELECTRICAL "conduction." Gray sets up a list of CONDUCTORS and INSULATORS of ELECTRICITY, or "non-conductors." (19) One experiment proved that ELECTRICITY could be transmitted, by sending an ELECTRIC CHARGE through 765 feet of thread. (20) Thus, the PRIMITIVE ELECTRICAL AGE describes our earliest stage of ELECTRICAL CIVILIZATION and the origin of the species HOMO ELECTRUS. In this age, the primary and fundamental discoveries of ELECTRICITY and MAGNETISM laid the groundwork for the experiments and discoveries of the CLASSICAL ELECTRICAL AGE that follows... |
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In the CLASSICAL ELECTRICAL AGE there was "a conviction that... the electric fluid was a manageable force, subject to rational laws..." (22). Experiments explored the foundational characteristics of ELECTROMAGNETISM, and methods for creating and storing ELECTRICITY were now being developed all over the world.
of the Classical Electrical Age: 1733 C.E. - Charles Francis Du Fay (French) experiments with the "electric fluid" and proposes that there are two ELECTRICITY fluids, vitreous and resinous, where unlike charges attract each other, and like charges repel each other. (23) Du Fay concludes everything, even the human body, contains ELECTRICITY. (24) 
1745 C.E. - E.G. von Kleist (German) and shortly thereafter, Pieter van Musschenbroek, (Dutch)
invent "the Leydon Jar," which collects and stores a concentrated ELECTRICAL CHARGE. (25)
1748 C.E. - William Watson (English) transmits a Leydon Jar's electric discharge over a circuit of wire 12,276 feet long, and decided that the speed of ELECTRICITY is instantaneous. (26) 1752 C.E. - Benjamin Franklin (American) demonstrates, through his famous kite experiment, that lightning is actually ELECTRICITY. (27) Franklin proposes that ELECTRICITY is "one-fluid," consisting of positive (+) and negative (-) ELECTRICITY; where unlike charges attract, like charges repel, and where "[an] uncharged body is neutral..." (28) In 1753 he invents the lightning rod. Also at this time there was much experiment on the phenomenon of atmospheric ELECTRICITY. 1771 C.E. - Luigi Galvani (Italian) experiments with frog legs and suspects that there "must be a connection between ELECTRICITY and life." (29) In 1791 Galvani publishes his theory of "animal electricity." (30) It turned out that it was an electric NERVE response that he observed. 1785 C.E. - Charles Augustin de Coulomb (French) formulates "the empirical relation between force, charge and distance for ELECTRICAL and MAGNETIC FIELDS." (31) 
1796 C.E.- Alessandro Volta (Italian) creates the first electric BATTERY, called the voltaic pile or voltaic cell, considered by some as "the greatest of all electrical discoveries" because it created a continuous ELECTRICAL CURRENT. (32) It was made public in the year 1800.
1819 C.E. - Hans Christian Oersted (Danish) discovers that a "current of ELECTRICITY creates a MAGNETIC FIELD or force." (33) 1820 C.E. - Andre Marie Ampere (French) advances research in ELECTROMAGNETISM and suggests "that ELECTROMAGNETISM might be used for telegraphy." (34) 1821 C.E. - William Sturgeon (English) creates the first ELECTROMAGNET. (35) 1830 C.E. - Joseph Henry (American) discovers electromagnetic self-INDUCTION. Henry operates an ELECTROMAGNET from a distance of 1030 feet, and proposes that an electromagnetic telegraph could be made using this method. (36) 1831 C.E. - Michael Faraday (English) discovers ELECTROMAGNETIC INDUCTION, or how ELECTRICAL CURRENT works, finding that ELECTRICITY produces MAGNETISM, and MAGNETISM produces ELECTRICITY. (37) Faraday's work enabled "many practical inventions [50-100 years later]... such as the motor, generator, transformer, telegraph, and telephone." Also, Faraday "created words such as electrode, anode, cathode, and ion to describe his work." (38) Faraday also created an ELECTRICAL GENERATOR, which eventually allowed ELECTRICITY to be generated on a large scale. (39) Thus, the CLASSICAL ELECTRICAL AGE contributed outstanding experiments which proved strategic to understanding the ELECTRICAL WORLD, and helped to develop the foundation of ELECTRICAL CIVILIZATION. With the creation and harnessing of ELECTRICAL CURRENT with the BATTERY, to ELECTROMAGNETIC INDUCTION and ELECTROMAGNETISM, it was now possible to develop the technologies that we now recognize as being the MODERN ELECTRICAL AGE... |
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With the discovery of ELECTROMAGNETIC INDUCTION the MODERN ELECTRICAL AGE was ushered in; "electricity entered its great era of proliferation, realizing the potentialities that had been so rapidly uncovered." This age developed the TELEGRAPH, ELECTRICAL POWER SYSTEM, and the ELECTRIC LIGHT. (40n) As our artificial technologies grew, the ARTIFICIAL ELECTRICAL WORLD began to shrink and become unified by ELECTRIFICATION.
of the Modern Electrical Age: 1837 C.E. - Samuel Finley Breese Morse (American) demostrates the first Morse TELEGRAPH which relayed messages over a wire 1700 feet long. (41) In 1838, messages were sent in "Morse code," an alphabet of dots and dashes signifying letters and numbers, over ten miles of wire. (42) The first official telegraphic message was sent on May 24, 1844, with the famous words: "What hath God Wrought!" (43) Author Neil Postman writes that Morse was the "..first true "spaceman" and that the telegraph "annihilated space" altogether, (44) and contributed greatly to the information revolution. (45n) TELEGRAPH messages traveled their long distances instantaneously at the light-speed of ELECTRICITY, 186,000 miles a second. (46) "In short order, much of the civilized world was linked by the vast new networks of wire." (47) The manufacture of TELEGRAPHs became "the first electrical industry" producing "telegraph instruments, relays, line wire, insulated magnet wire, cable, poles, cross arms, insulators, pins, lightning arrestors, lineman's tools, and various other items." (48n) 1840 C.E. - Alexander Bain (Scottish) develops an electric clock. (48.5) 1843 C.E. - Emil Heinrich du Bois-Reymond (German) "demonstrates that ELECTRICITY is used by the nervous system to communicate between different parts of the body." (154) 
1873 C.E. - Zenobe Theophile Gramme (Belgian) created an electric DYNAMO (D.C. GENERATOR) and ELECTRIC MOTOR exhibited side by side at the Vienna Electrical Exposition of 1873.
"For the first time there was available a small powerful source of power that could run for days with little or no attention." (49) And "[s]uddenly it became clear that ELECTRICITY could now do heavy work, transporting power through wires from place to place. It was a revelation- and immediately hundreds of minds turned to the possible uses of the idea." (50) Henry Adams (American) wrote about the DYNAMO as "a moral force" comparable to the European cathedrals in the essay "The Dynamo and the Virgin." (51n)
1876 C.E. - Alexander Graham Bell (American) demonstrates the "Bell TELEPHONE" at the Centennial Exposition of the Philadelphia World's Fair. (52) To reproduce speech, Bell used a ELECTROMAGNETIC INDUCTION with "modulating current to parallel the waveforms of the voice" (53) 
1878 C.E. - William Crookes (English) develops the Crookes Tube, an early cathode-ray tube device. It is stated that "[n]o other invention or discovery in the ELECTRICAL field has had so many important and useful descendents... From it, directly or indirectly, came the X-RAY tube, the cathode-ray tube or oscilloscope, the radio vacuum tube, the iconoscope and its successors, the kinescope, a number of accelerators, the electron gun, and the electron microscope." It also "led to the discovery of radioactivity." (53.5)
1879 C.E. - Thomas Alva Edison (American) receives a patent for the first commercially practical incandescent ELECTRIC LIGHT. (54) In 1882 Edison opened the Pearl Street Station for incandescent ELECTRIC LIGHT in New York City. "The Edison System" was run with DIRECT CURRENT. It was not the first electric lighting system, but it did "set the detailed pattern for the future" as "the lamp was a basic unit in a much larger plan for no less than a complete commercial lighting system with a central power station. In his methodical way he worked out to the last detail, from dynamos and power lines down to house switches, sockets, fuses, meters, then put the whole operation in the famous.. installation.. which set the criteria for much of our electric power and lighting systems today." (55) (56n) 1882 C.E. - Gaulard & Gibbs (English-French) develop the ALTERNATING CURRENT TRANSFORMER. (58) 1885 C.E. - George Westinghouse (American) purchased the patent-rights to the Gaulard-Gibbs A.C. TRANSFORMER for use in the United States, (59) which was the key to a "complete A.C. power system" in 1886. "ELECTRICITY could now be generated at any convenient voltage, "stepped up" by transformers for economical transmission and again "stepped down" at substations for local distribution." Thus, ELECTRICAL POWER, or "continuous lightning," could be sent "virtually anywhere" with this new "ability to transmit power at a distance." (60) 1886 C.E. - Elihu Thomson (American) invents an early form of electric-arc welding of steel. (155) 1887 C.E. - Heinrich Hertz (German) demonstrates the existence of ELECTROMAGNETIC WAVES, through an experiment which was "radio itself, ..[transmitting].. a "signal" through space without wires." (61.5) 1888 C.E. - Nikola Tesla (American) invents the ELECTROMAGNETIC INDUCTION MOTOR. (61) It allowed "an ingenious "polyphase" A.C. system whereby the A.C. GENERATOR produces several interlocked currents, identical but out of step with each other... [producing] in a receiving MOTOR a rotating MAGNETIC FIELD..." Also, this became "the key to the heavy industrial use of A.C. power.. " and was used in the "first major hydroelectric plant" at Niagara Falls in 1896. (62) 1893 C.E.  - An electric flat-iron becomes the first electric home appliance. (63)
1895 C.E. - Frank J. Sprague, (American) one of many street car inventors, helps to develop "self-powered electric trains of cars" used for urban and suburban transportation. (64) 1895 C.E. - Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen (German) discovers X-RAYs with a Crookes Tube. (64.25) 1896 C.E. - Henri Bequerel (French) discovers RADIOACTIVITY, with evidence provided by Mme. Marie and Pierre Curie (French), and forms the groundwork for NUCLEAR research. (64.35) 1896 C.E. - Thomas Armat (American) creates the "vitascope" to project motion pictures. (64.4) 1897 C.E. - Joseph John Thomson (English) discovers the ELECTRON, "the particle that makes up the ELECTRIC CURRENT and the first known particle that is smaller than an ATOM." (64.5) 1897 C.E. - Karl Ferdinand Braun (German) develops the "oscilloscope," the first cathode-ray tube which shoots ELECTRONs onto a fluorescent screen to create an image with light, which later made television possible. (64.5) Thus, the MODERN ELECTRICAL AGE expanded with the new large-scale ELECTRICAL GENERATION and DISTRIBUTION systems, a creating a common armature of ELECTRICAL CIVILIZATION via an infrastructure of POWER and LIGHT, (65) supporting millions of small ELECTRIC MOTORS and technologies embedded in the new ELECTRICAL APPLIANCES. (65.5n) As ELECTRIFICATION projects were beginning to develop all over the world, a new POST-MODERN ELECTRICAL AGE was beginning to unfold, and with it, a new ELECTRICAL REALITY... |
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The POST-MODERN ELECTRICAL AGE defines a new SENSE of REALITY brought into daily life by the inventions of the TELEPHONE, the RADIO, the TELEVISION, and the COMPUTER, all which help to define and build the VIRTUAL ELECTRICAL WORLD. These and other new ELECTRONIC TECHNOLOGIES changed our notions of SPACE, TIME, AESTHETICS, and CULTURE, locally and globally. Hindsight allows us to see that the "electric implosion" of the last 100 years is ultimately a "conflict between sight and sound, between written and oral kinds of perception and organization"- which ultimately results in the new "virtual" REALITY of HOMO ELECTRUS emerging into CONSCIOUSNESS. (66n) In this new age everything is effected and affected by the powerful ELECTRICAL FORCE...
of the Post-Modern Electrical Age: 1901 C.E. - Guglielmo Marconi (Italian) transmits a wireless morse-code message with a "radio signal" from Newfoundland to England, thousands of miles away. (67) It uses ELECTROMAGNETIC WAVES that move through space at 186,000 miles a second. (68) 1902 C.E. - Arthur Korn (German) demonstrates a technique to send pictures over TELEGRAPH wires, which was an early version of the fax-machine. (68.5) 1905 C.E. - Albert Einstein (Swiss) develops the Special Theory of Relativity, with the mathematical equation E=MC^2. [E=Energy, M=Mass, C=Speed of Light] It claims that "mass and energy are interchangable..." and that "a tiny amount of MATTER can be turned into enormous energy," which was later proven true by the ATOMIC BOMB and NUCLEAR POWER. (68.6) 1906 C.E. - Reginald Aubrey Fessenden (American) makes the first AMPLITUDE MODULATED (AM) RADIO broadcast. (69) 1906 C.E. - the first juke box is created by the Automatic Machine and Tool Co. of Chicago. (101) 
1907 C.E. - Lee De Forest (American) creates the VACUUM-TUBE Audion, which amplifies ELECTRICAL CURRENT into RADIO waves, and allows long-distance broadcasting. (69.5) It was an "all-electronic relay, .. minus moving parts.." and became "the foundation of.. electronics." ( 69.75)
1913 C.E. - Niels Henrik David Bohr (Danish) publishes his famous theoretical model of the structure of the hydrogen ATOM. (69.9) 1914 C.E. - Traffic signals made of red and green lights are introduced (America). (157) 1915 C.E. - The first transatlantic RADIO-TELEPHONE conversation is transmitted between Arlington Virginia, USA, and the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France. (69.8) Also, wireless communication begins between the USA and Japan across the Pacific Ocean. (69.9) And, the "first North American transcontinental TELEPHONE call between Alexander Graham Bell in New York, and Thomas A. Watson in San Francisco" takes place over 3000 miles. (69.95) 1920 C.E. - the first RADIO broadcasting station, KDKA in Pittsburgh, PA, USA, is created by the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company. In 1922, 569 RADIO broadcasting stations exist in America. (70) Marshall McLuhan states that the RADIO "is not only a mighty awakener of archaic memories, forces, and animosities, but a decentralizing, pluralistic force, as is really the case with all electric power and media." (71.5) 1920 C.E. - Lee De Forest (American) develops a syncronized sound and picture cinema system, used later for MOVIES with sound tracks. (80) 1926 C.E. - John Logie Baird (Scottish) transmits a TELEVISION picture mechanically. (82) 1927 C.E. - American Telephone & Telegraph transmits a TELEVISION signal over RADIO. (84) 1927 C.E. - Vannevar Bush (American) develops "an electro-mechanical analog COMPUTER, the Differential Analyzer, which can solve differential [calculus] equations." (71.10) 1929 C.E. - Bell Telephone Labs develops and transmits color TELEVISION. (71.25) 1930 C.E. - the magnetic tape recorder is invented (Germany). (86) 1932 C.E. - John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton (British) build a small atomic ACCELERATOR, and smash the first ATOM, lithium, using 150,000 volts of ELECTRICITY, (71.55) making NUCLEAR POWER probable. 1932 C.E. - Max Knoll and Ernst Ruska (German) build the first ELECTRON microscope, with 12,000x magnification power. (71.57) 1933 C.E. - Edwin Howard Armstrong (American) patents FM (FREQUENCY MODULATION) RADIO. (71.6) 1933 C.E. - Karl Jansky (American) invents the RADIO telescope, which sees ELECTROMAGNETIC WAVES. (88) 1935 C.E. - Robert Watson-Watt (British) develops radar, showing aircraft 15 miles away as a blip on a cathode-ray screen. (71.65) 1937 C.E. - Chester Carlson (American) invents an early photocopier using xerography. (91) 1938 C.E. - GE and Westinghouse (American) develop the first fluorescent lamps. (88.5) 1939 C.E. - M.I.T. (American) builds a solar house to study SOLAR POWER. (92) 1940 C.E. - CBS (American) broadcasts the first color TELEVISION. (89) 1941 C.E. - the United States Federal Communications Commission sets transmission standards for TELEVISION of 525 lines of resolution at 30 frames per second. (72) Commercial TELEVISION broadcasting begins in America. (73) 1942 C.E. - Enrico Fermi (American) designs the first NUCLEAR REACTOR, which is a controlled NUCLEAR chain-reaction. (89.5) 1942 C.E. - M.I.T. (America) develops LORAN [Long Range Air Navigation], "which marks the world's air and sea lanes like streets" via RADIO signals. (93) 1945 C.E. - the first automatic ELECTRONIC digital COMPUTER, ENIAC, (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator) is built, with "18,000 VACUUM TUBES and 6000 switches." (74) 
1945 C.E. - the first ATOMIC BOMB explodes. (89.75)
1947 C.E. - the first commercial MICROWAVE oven is introduced (America). (102) 1948 C.E. - Bell Laboratories invents the TRANSISTOR, replacing the VACUUM TUBE. It replaces mechanical with electronic switching, uses less electrical power, reduces heat, and allows for miniaturization of electronics. (75) 1948 C.E. - Ampex (American) develops the first magnetic tape audio recorder. (119) 1948 C.E. - Cable TELEVISION is introduced. (119) 1948 C.E. - an ATOMIC clock is invented that keeps time to an accuracy of 1 second every 1000 years. (90) 1952 C.E. - the first ELECTRONIC hearing aids with TRANSISTORs appear. (120) 1954 C.E. - the first commercial TRANSISTOR RADIO, the "Regency" is put on the market, (121) which "opens the flood gates to mass-produced transistors for car and home radios, TV sets and, before long, computers." (122) 1954 C.E. - D.M. Chapin, Calvin Souther Fuller, and G.L. Pearson, (American) of Bell Labs invent the silicon PHOTOVOLTAIC CELL, which produces an ELECTRICAL CURRENT from sunlight. (123) 1955 C.E. - Erwin Wilhelm Mueller (American) develops the field ion microscope, which "can picture individual ATOMS." (124) 1956 C.E. - Calder Hall (England) becomes the first large-scale NUCLEAR POWER station to generate ELECTRICITY. (77) 1956 C.E. - An ELECTRON beam is used as a technique to weld metals together. (156) 1955 C.E. - Narinder Kapary (British) invents fiber optic cable, which will be used "to transmit telephone, telex, television, and computer signals." (110) 1956 C.E. - the Lip Company (France) creates the first watch which runs on electric BATTERIES. (103) 
1956 C.E. - Alexander Poniatoff (American) creates and markets the first video camera and video tape-recorder. (104) |
1957 C.E. - the first artificial SPACE satellite,
Sputnik I, (Russian) is launched and orbits EARTH. (105)
1958 C.E. - Bell Labs (American) develops the MODEM, allowing binary data to be transmitted over TELEPHONE lines. (125) 1958 C.E. - Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce (American) separately invent the INTEGRATED CIRCUIT, a single silicon chip with many electronic components, which became "in a few years the main components of computers." (126) 1958 C.E. - Vanguard I, (American) is the first SPACE satellite to generate its own ELECTRICAL POWER from SOLAR CELLs, charging BATTERIES which sends information back to EARTH by a RADIO transmitter. (106) 1958 C.E. - Clarence Walton Lillehei (American) utilizes the external pacemaker for regulating the heart beat, and in 1959 the first pacemaker is implanted by Ake Senning. (128) 1959 C.E. - Xerox (American) introduces the first commercial photocopier. (108) 1959 C.E. - the first GEOTHERMAL electric POWER PLANT (New Zealand) begins operating. (109) 1959 C.E. - Richard P. Feynman (American) proposes making tiny TRANSISTORS "using light or electrons.. developing structures built one atom at a time, and building circuits with as few as seven atoms." These ideas were virtually all "put to practical use over the next 30 or so years." (127) 1960 C.E. - the first weather satellite (American) is launched. (111) 1960 C.E. - the first LASER (American) creates a LIGHT which is 1 million times as bright as sunlight. (112) 1962 C.E. - the Telstar satellite (American) is launched. It is the first active communications SPACE satellite, enabling transatlantic TELEVISION broadcasts and relaying TELEPHONE calls. (113) 1962 C.E. -  Philips (Netherlands) invents the audio-cassette, which records sound on magnetic plastic tape. (129)
1962 C.E. - the Unimation Company (American) develops the first industrial ROBOT in the United States. (130) 1964 C.E. - the Control Data Corporation (CDC) and Seymour Cray (American) develop the first commerically successful supercomputer, which can perform 9 million multiplications per second, or 9 megaflops. (132) 1965 C.E. - Sony (Japan) introduces first video recorder, video camera, and videocassette. (134) 1967 C.E. - the first tidal electric POWER PLANT (France) begins operation. (114) 1969 C.E. - the ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency) COMPUTER NETWORK becomes operational. Used send information between different types of remote COMPUTERs, it is the precursor to today's INTERNET system. (131) 1969 C.E. - U.S. banks begin installing automatic teller machines (ATM's). In 1977 ATM's are networked together for the first time. (135) 1969 C.E. - the Apollo 11 spacecraft (American) lands on the Moon and sends live video data and sound communications back to EARTH. (115) 
1970 C.E. - Floppy disks are introduced for storing COMPUTER data. (133)
1971 C.E. - Intel (American) introduces the COMPUTER MICROPROCESSOR, the INTEL 4004, an INTEGRATED CIRCUIT that is "a computer on a chip," which revolutionizes computing. (116) 1972 C.E. - Philips (Netherlands) introduces the laserdisk recording system. (136) 1972 C.E. - the first CAT-scanning machine, or Computerized Axial Tomography imager, is a new medical technology introduced for studying the body and BRAIN with ELECTROMAGNETISM. (137) 1973 C.E. - the first U.S. SPACE station, Skylab 2, is launched. (138) 1975 C.E. - Ed Roberts (American) introduces the Altair home computer kit, which is the first personal COMPUTER. (139) 1977 C.E. - Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak (American) develop the Apple II personal COMPUTER, the first to be pre-assembled. (141) 1977 C.E. - Voyager SPACE probes 1 & 2 (American) are launched to the outer planets. (142) 1977 C.E. - Raymond V. Damadian (American) builds the first Magnetic Resonance Imager, or MRI machine, which is a medical technology "based [upon] nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy techniques" that allows doctors to explore the body ELECTROMAGNETICALLY. (143) 1979 C.E. - the first cellular TELEPHONE network is created (Japan). (144) 
1980 C.E. - Philips (Netherands) and Sony (Japan) invent the compact disk (CD) in which digital images and sound are read off a plastic disk by a LASER stylus. (117)
1980 C.E. - Sony (Japan) announces Walkman I, its portable audio-cassette tape player with headphones. (118) 1982 C.E. - Sony (Japan) shows the "Mavica," the first prototype all-ELECTRONIC digital camera. (152) 1984 C.E. - Philips (Netherlands) and Sony (Japan) introduce the CD-ROM (Compact Disk Read-Only Memory) for COMPUTER data storage. (145) 1985 C.E. - Color photocopiers and fax-machines are massively utilized. 1988 C.E. - the National Weather Service (American) installs 115 doppler radars for forecasting the weather by measuring the speed and direction of the wind and storms. (146) 1989 C.E. - Tim Berners-Lee (Swiss) creates the World Wide Web (WWW) on the Internet, which is "a series of concepts, communication protocols, and systems to support the interlinking of various types of information according to the hypermedia concept." (153) 1990 C.E. - the Voyager 1 SPACE probe (American) captures and transmits the first picture of the whole solar system as seen from outer SPACE. ( 147) 1991 C.E. - Woo Paik (American) and coworkers at General Instrument Corporation develop the "first a working prototype of digital high definition TELEVISION," or HDTV. (148) 1991 C.E. - Thinking Machines (American) develops the CM-2 parallel COMPUTER with 16,000 MICROPROCESSORS that can compute 2 trillion calculations per second (2 teraflops). (149) 1993 C.E. - M.I.T. (American) launches Odyssey, the first inexpensive submersible tetherless ROBOT for exploration as deep 3 miles underwater in Antarctica. (150) 1993 C.E. - the Very Long Baseline Array (VRBA) network of 10 RADIO telescopes provides 500 times better resolution than the best optical telescope. (151) 1999 C.E. - The international SPACE station begins construction. 2000 C.E. - Y2K, or the Year 2000 COMPUTER bug brings apocalyptic hysteria to the ELECTRICAL STATE of HOMO ELECTRUS. Throughout the 20th century it has been said that "many people could not follow or conceptualize" the technological change that occurred in their environment. One example given is the "gap between science and technology, and the lack of understanding of it by the public." This includes our lack of understanding of the role of ELECTRIFICATION in the technological evolution and revolution of the 20th century. The chaotic, transformative change resulting from ELECTRIFICATION has been exponential, seemingly happening all at once, as it "began coming too fast for humans to adjust to it." The effect has been that technological "development is only understood by a small part of the population." (140) We can change the outcome by studying the ELECTRICAL FORCE, and by looking at the infrastructural foundation of our POST-MODERN ELECTRICAL AGE which has helped us create and define a new VIRTUAL ELECTRICAL WORLD. To ground ourselves in the unfolding 21st century, then, we need to better understand the role of the ELECTRICAL INFRASTRUCTURE in sustaining our ELECTRICAL CIVILIZATION. |