Thomas Edison. Courtesy: wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons.

On October 21, 1879, someone described by the New York Times as “grimy-handed” led a visiting reporter to his study in Menlo Park, New Jersey. Behold, there appeared what came to be known as the light bulb. Edison had invented a simple, elegant horseshoe-shaped coil to quiver electricity into illumination —http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/1021.html#article. It was not long (1933) until a new world, of all things plugged in, debuted in the TVA town of Norris, where energy became “the clay of invention” (Building the World, Volume II, p. 458) bringing forth products like refrigerators, electric ranges, and of course the toaster. What is the destiny of electricity? Will Peter Glaser’s proposal for satellite solar power provide the world with abundant electricity from the sun? Or might li-fi be the light of the future? Dedicate October 21, and this week, to sharing your ideas about electricity, energy, and destiny.

Building the World Blog by Kathleen Lusk Brooke and Zoe G Quinn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.