The Electric Age Begins

The period from 1879 to 1901 spanning Edison's incandescent lamp, the first central power stations at Pearl Street, Holborn Viaduct and Vulcan Street, Parsons' steam turbine, the first wind-generated electricity, Niagara Falls alternating-current power and the Spindletop oil gusher that opened the twentieth-century oil industry. Belongs here: a milestone from this atlas dated 1879 through 1901, the founding years of commercial electricity generation and distribution alongside the birth of the modern oil industry. Does not belong here: an earlier prime-mover milestone, grouped under Steam and Early Industrial Power; a mid-century nuclear or solar milestone, grouped under Mid-Century Power Transformations.