Early electricity distribution - how power was sent to the consumer in the early days
Listener's query
"When electricity was in its infancy, how was it shifted from the power station to the consumer? Was it AC or DC, and why?"
Brief summary
Making History went for the answer to Christchurch, to the Museum of Electricity, which in 1903 opened as the power station for the Bournemouth trams. There were trams running in Bournemouth and Poole, using Direct Current (DC) cables. However, DC gets weaker the further it gets from its source, so an extra power station had to be built to complete the line.
Direct Current goes right back to the beginning of the 19th century. Thomas Alva Edison was a proponent of Direct Current transmission - he envisaged a power station almost at every street corner.
Alternating Current (AC) was developed by Nikolai Tesla (1856-1943), a Croatian-born electrical engineer who went to the USA in 1884, where he invented, among other things, fluorescent lighting. Tesla showed that AC produced bigger amounts of electricity and transmitted it greater distances, and so Direct Current was superseded.
Further reading
Marc Seifer, Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla (Citadel Press, 1998)
John Munro, The Story of Electricity (Kessinger Publishing, 2004)
Steve Parker, Thomas Edison and Electricity (Science Discoveries Series, HarperCollins, 1992)
Place to visit
Museum of Electricity
The Old Power Station, Bargates, Christchurch, Dorset BH23 1QE
Tel: 01202 480467
Fax: 01202 480468
Website:
Website
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Vanessa has presented听science and current affairs programmes for 大象传媒, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and Discovery and has presented for 大象传媒 Radio 4 & Five Live and a regular contributor to the Daily Telegraph and the Mail on Sunday, Scotsman and Sunday Herald.听