Electricity

The description 'making electricity into a manageable thing' would encompass several of the central inventions of modern civilisation. The feat helped to spark off the industrial process. The development of the dynamo by Werner von Siemens in 1866, to generate electricity, was a decisive turning-point in that development.

• The generation of electricity, c. 1850
• The light bulb, 1854
• The dishwasher, 1886 / Germany 1921 Miele
• The refrigerator, in 1873
• The washing-machine, 1907
• The computer, Konrad Zuse, 1941
• The solar cell, based on Albert Einstein's 'photoelectric effects' 1905, Calvin Fuller, Gerald Pearson, Bell Laboratories, by-product of the invention of the transistor, 1953, energy straight from the Sun