Electricity has become something we rely on to live our lives, but it was by no means an overnight discovery. Over the last two hundred years it has developed from a scientific phenomenon to part of everyday life. One of the first applications of electricity was the first incandescent light bulb in around 1870.

The electric overhaul of society obviously brought many fresh new dangers with it, but it eliminated some of the old ones, like the naked flames of gas lighting that was commonly used in homes and factories then.

The Joule heating process takes place in light bulbs, and also in electric heating. Many people have condemned electric heating as uneconomic because effectively, heat energy is being used (in power stations) on mass to create heat for houses.

Some countries, for example, Denmark have issued a new legislation restricting the use of electric heating in new buildings, if allowed at all. Electricity is an extremely helpful source for refrigeration. As the demand for air conditioning increases so does the overall electricity demand which electricity utilities will have to cater for.

Telecommunication is of course another area dependent upon electricity; in fact the electrical telegraph was one of the first successful applications of electricity.

In the 1860s, global communication was made a possibility with telegraph systems going intercontinental, then transatlantic. Fibre optic technology and satellites have now taken a large chunk of the communications market but electricity still powers every communications application we have available to us.

Electromagnetism is most visibly apparent in the electric motor which of course provides an efficient and clean power motive. A motor that stays in one place, like a winch can easily be powered by a stationary power supply, but a moving motor like an electric car or scooter must carry its power supply along with it in the form of a battery, or it can gain electrical charge from sliding contact like with a pantograph.

Perhaps the most important invention of the 1900s is the transistor. It is a vital part of all modern electrical circuits and a modern integrated circuit may contain several billion miniaturised transistors in a region of only a few centimetres squared.