Book description
In the early 1870s a night-time view over Britain would have
revealed towns lit by the warm glow of gas and oil lamps and a much
darker countryside, the only light emanating from the fiery sparks of
late running steam trains. However, by the end of this same decade
that Victorian Britons would experience a new brilliance in their
streets, town halls and other public places. Electricity had come to
town. In Children of Light, Gavin Weightman brings to life not just
the most celebrated electrical pioneers, such as Thomas Edison, but
also the men such as Rookes Crompton who lit Henley Regatta in 1879;
Sebastian Ziani de Ferranti, a direct descendant of one of the
Venetian Doges, who built Britain's first major power station on the
Thames at Deptford; and Anglo-Irish aristocrat, Charles Parsons
inventor of the steam turbine, which revolutionised the generating of
electricity. Children of Light takes in the electrification of the
tramways and the London Underground, the transformation of the home
with 'labour saving' devices, the vital modernising of industry during
two world wars, and the battles between environmentalists and the
promoters of electric power, which began in earnest when the first
pylons went up. As Children of Light shows, the electric revolution
has brought us luxury that would have astonished the Victorians, but
at a price we are still having to pay.
