The Age of Invention

Your Playlist:

Description

Once a subject of crude experiments and parlor tricks, electricity was recognized some 200 years ago as a force that could completely transform the world - driving machines, lighting homes, and enabling us to communicate across continents. This program shows how scientists and engineers unlocked the power of electricity in an extraordinary century of innovation and invention. It profiles scientists who discovered the links between electricity and magnetism as well as other fundamental concepts - Hans Christian Oersted, Michael Faraday, William Sturgeon, Joseph Henry, and others. The development of commercial applications is discussed with segments on Samuel Morse, the story of the 1866 transatlantic cable, and the "war of currents" rivalry between Thomas Edison's DC and Nikola Tesla's AC, championed by George Westinghouse.