In the beginning the only source of heat and survival was fire, cavemen and women used fire to light their homes and keep warm in the cold nights of mesopotamia. For hundreds of years people survived off of fire as a way of light. Kerosene lamps were very popular during the early 1800’s, another popular choice was whale blubber. This would change during the mid 1800’s when scientist managed to harness the power of lightning itself. Benjamin Franklin is commonly given the title of founder of electricity. While he has probably the most famous experiment including electricity he wasn’t necessarily the first person to find out about it. A writer for TVA Kids wrote: For thousands of years, people all over the world have been fascinated by lightning. …show more content…
Maybe you have heard about the famous kite experiment by American Founding Father and inventor Benjamin Franklin. In 1752, to prove that lightning was electrical, he flew a kite during a thunderstorm.He tied a metal key onto the string and, as he suspected it would, electricity from the storm clouds flowed down the string, which was wet, and he received an electrical shock. Franklin was extremely lucky not to have been seriously hurt during this experiment, but he was excited to have proved his idea.Throughout the next hundred years, many inventors and scientists tried to find a way to use electrical power to make light. In 1879, the American inventor Thomas Edison was finally able to produce a reliable, long-lasting electric light bulb in his laboratory. By the end of the 1880s, small electrical stations based on Edison's designs were in a number of U.S. cities. But each station was able to power only a few city blocks. Although the majority of people living in larger towns and cities had electricity by 1930, only 10 percent of Americans who lived on farms and in rural areas had electric power. At this time, electric companies were all privately owned and run to make money. These companies argued that it would be