Introduction

The Industrial Revolution began in the 1870s with the inventions of the steam engine, electricity, and oil drilling. At that time, virtually everyone alive lived without electricity, traveled primarily by horse, and heated their homes with wood. Life was hard and most time and income were spent on producing and buying food. The inventions of electricity generation and lighting by Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison changed everything.[1] The era of electricity started with the opening, in 1897, of the first multimegawatt Niagara Falls (waterfall) hydroelectric power plant. Tesla's alternating current (AC) generators enabled the harnessing of the power of falling water and distribution of the electricity to the city of New York. The current AC motor used by Tesla in all of its cars is built using the same laws of physics. We now live in an era of energy abundance. Never before in the history of humankind has so much energy been available. It is difficult to fathom that—just in the last 300 years—we have used more energy than in all the millions of years of human history prior. Let's have a look at what has happened to the world of energy in the last 150 years.