It's been 62 minutes and 13 seconds since our electricity went out. I've missed Americas Next Top Model and Idol will be starting any minute. If it weren't for the battery in my computer and my verizon wireless card (which has proven itself to be worth every penny I pay for it tonite alone) I might just have gauged my eyes out. Wow, what we take for granted. Does anyone know what it is you hit on your keyboard that makes it start automatically deleting letters when you're trying to fix a word, instead of just adding the new letter in, so you wind up having to type the whole freaking sentence over again?? I hate that!! Anyways, it's like we have no tolerance for any deviation from the norm. No "margin of error" for anything that in the slightest bit disrupts our normal routines (damn, it's starting to get hot now-with the power being out I've got Erin, and of course Maddy, right on flippin top of me). I mean, God forbid we get inconvenienced in any way . Did anyone catch Poprah today? Really sad, what's going on in Africa. It breaks my heart to think of those children. God Bless them.
All right this freaking keyboard is pissing me off. Time to Ebay.
For now...i'll pay homage to Ben Franklin & Tom Edison for bringing light into my life!
Before There Were Lights: A History of Electricity in the U.S.
For thousands of years, people all over the world have been fascinated by lightning. Some wondered how people could put that kind of power to practical use. But it wasn't until the 18th century that the path to the everyday use of electrical power began to take shape.
Ben Franklin proved that lightning was a form of electricity.
Maybe you have heard about the famous kite experiment by American Founding Father and inventor Benjamin Franklin. In 1752, to prove that lightning was electrical, he flew a kite during a thunderstorm.
He tied a metal key onto the string and, as he suspected it would, electricity from the storm clouds flowed down the string, which was wet, and he received an electrical shock. Franklin was extremely lucky not to have been seriously hurt during this experiment, but he was excited to have proved his idea.
Throughout the next hundred years, many inventors and scientists tried to find a way to use electrical power to make light. In 1879, the American inventor Thomas Edison was finally able to produce a reliable, long-lasting electric light bulb in his laboratory.
By the end of the 1880s, small electrical stations based on Edison's designs were in a number of U.S. cities. But each station was able to power only a few city blocks.
Although the majority of people living in larger towns and cities had electricity by 1930, only 10 percent of Americans who lived on farms and in rural areas had electric power. At this time, electric companies were all privately owned and run to make money. These companies argued that it would be too expensive to string miles of electric lines to farms. They also thought farmers were too poor to pay for electric service.
New electric lines brought TVA power to the rural areas in the Valley. (Photo courtesy of the New Deal Network)
President Franklin D. Roosevelt believed strongly that America's rural areas should have the same access to electricity as cities did. In 1935 the Rural Electric Administration (REA) was created to bring electricity to rural areas like the Tennessee Valley.
By 1939 the percentage of rural homes with electricity had risen to 25 percent. The Tennessee Valley Authority also set up the Electric Home and Farm Authority to help farmers buy electric appliances like stoves and washing machines.
People in the Tennessee Valley found that electricity transformed their lives in ways they could not have imagined.
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