Benjamin Lamme, “Electricity the Beneficent,” Electrical Experimenter, 1916.

By the early 1900s, electricity was being used widely in transportation, industry, urban areas, and in some homes. Yet it also had begun to assume an almost invisible and unappreciated character, according to Benjamin Lamme, an engineer at the Westinghouse Electric Company.

“Imagine,” Lamme asked in 1916, the world “suddenly without electricity.” How would its disappearance disrupt American life? 

What were Lamme’s main examples? How did these uses of electricity come to be normalized and overlooked as a form of daily energy consumption?

Citation: 

Lamme, Benjamin G. “Electricity the Beneficent.” Electrical Experimenter 3, March 1916.

Library Item Date: 

1916