Uses of Electricity

Uses of Electricity

Electric current was born in 1800 when the Italian scientist Volta constructed the first source of continuous current. Since that time numerous scientists and inventors, Russian and foreign, have greatly contributed to its development and practical application.

Now electric power has become universal. We can’t imagine our life without such electrical devices as electric lamps, vacuum cleaners, refrigerators, washing machines and other electrically operated devices that are widely used today, In fact, telephones, lifts, electric trams and trains, radio, television, computers and lasers have been made possible only owing to electric current.

Probably the most important use of electricity in the modem home is producing light. It was a Russian engineer, Alexander Lodygin, who made the first successful incandescent lamp. The famous American inventor Thomas Edison improved the lamp having used a carbon filament. Then Lodygin invented a lamp with a tungsten filament, the lamp that we use today.

Some electric devices are based on specific properties of electricity: electrostatics in the case of photocopying machine and electromagnetism in the case of radar and television.

Electric energy finds its most important use in industry. At every plant and factory there are different electric machines, for example, transformers, motors, engines, dynamos etc. Automation which is one of the main factors of technical progress today is impossible without electricity.

One of the greatest advantages of electricity is that it is clean, easy to regulate and generates no by-products.

Today consumption of electricity per capita is an indicator of the state of development and economic health of a nation.