

That development is said to have inspired Benjamin Franklin’s famous experiments, as well as the invention of the battery by Italy’s Alessandro Volta in 1800, Humphry Davy’s first effective “arc lamp” in 1808, and in 1820, Hans Christian Oersted’s demonstration of the relationship between electricity and magnetism. Many accounts begin power’s story at the demonstration of electric conduction by Englishman Stephen Gray, which led to the 1740 invention of glass friction generators in Leyden, Germany. The history of power generation is long and convoluted, marked by myriad technological milestones, conceptual and technical, from hundreds of contributors. These are some of the events that have shaped both the history of power and the history of POWER. During its 138-year history, the magazine’s pages have reflected the fast-changing evolution of the technologies and markets that characterize the world’s power sector. POWER magazine was launched in 1882, just as the world was beginning to grasp the implications of a new, versatile form of energy: electricity.
