Children of Light : How Electricity Changed Britain Forever, Hardcover by Wei...

by Gavin Weightman

$45 · Offered by eBay · No longer available

Children of Light : How Electricity Changed Britain Forever, Hardcover by Weightman, Gavin, ISBN 1848871171, ISBN-13 9781848871175, Used Good Condition, Free shipping in the US In the early 1870s a nighttime view over Britain would have revealed towns lit by the warm glow of gas and oil lamps and a much darker countryside, the only light emanating from the fiery sparks of late running steam trains. However, by the end of this same decade, Victorian Britons would experience a new brilliance in their streets, town halls and other public places. Electricity had come to town. In Children of Light, Gavin Weightman brings to life not just the most celebrated electrical pioneers, among them Thomas Edison, but also Rookes Crompton who lit Henley Regatta in 1879; Sebastian Ziani de Ferranti, a direct descendant of one of the Venetian Doges, who built Britain's first major power station on the Thames at Deptford; and Anglo-Irish aristocrat Charles Parsons, inventor of the steam turbine, which revolutionized the generating of electricity. Children of Light paints a vivid portrait of the electrification of the tramways and the London Underground, the transformation of the home with `labour saving' devices, the vital modernizing of industry during two world wars, and the battles between environmentalists and the promoters of electric power, which began in earnest when the first pylons went up. As Weightman shows, the electric revolution has brought us luxury that would have astonished the

• Publisher: Atlantic Books, The Limited
• Year: 2011
• Binding: Hardcover
• ISBN: 9781848871175
• Condition: Good

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