Our Needs for Electricity

The United States is a land of many (electrically operated) consumer conveniences: electric and electronic stoves for cooking, electric heating for homes, laundry washers and dryers, automatic dishwashers, air-conditioning, toasters, irons, refrigerators and food freezers, television sets, electric food mixers, electric can openers, sewing machines, stereo equipment, computer systems, and many other electrically operated time and labor-savers.

Today, electricity, and electronics, is the lifeblood of our industry and commerce. Millions of jobs depend on a good supply of this energy.

A plentiful supply of electricity has been a key factor in giving people in the U.S. the world's highest standard of living. If we are to keep what we have gained and provide for future demands for electricity, we may have to take a hard look at "new ways of doing old things." We may even have to cross some new frontiers in science.

To meet all of these demands for electrical energy, the U.S. generates and uses a third of the world's electrical energy. We'll need this and maybe more in the future. That's why our inventors are constantly looking for new ways to generate electricity. That's why many revolutionary smoke-free nuclear steam-electric plants are working to supply our increasing need for electric power. Some people say they are too hazardous.

Seventy-nine years ago many people in the U.S. claimed that AC electricity (the type we all use in our homes today) is a killer. There was quite a battle between people who thought DC electric power was safer and those who believed AC electric power to be the wave of the future. But AC power won! And in 1895 the first AC electric power plant in the world began generating electricity at Niagara Falls, New York. Today it's a must throughout the world.

Incidentally, do you know who discovered the AC principle of generating electric power? Not many people do. It was invented by a Serbian immigrant to the United States, Nikola Tesla.