Maurice Hird, in Weaver, 'The house and its equipment', Country Life, cl910.

Alessandro Volta's invention of a chemical battery, the Voltaic pile, at the end of the 18th century was to enable Sir Humphrey Davy to demonstrate the prospect of lighting by electricity.

In l802 at the Royal Institution Davy connected the ends of a platinum wire to the terminals of a Voltaic pile. The current created caused the wire to glow to incandescence before oxidation broke the connection. Six years later, using an enormous battery of 2,000 cells connected in series, he produced arcing sparks between two pieces of charcoal.

Since at least l838 several inventors had been attempting to produce incandescent lamps using platinum or carbon filaments. Although some claimed success no practical lamp had appeared on the market. Although these filaments had high melting points, oxidation caused the filaments to burn out after a short time, even when encased in glass bulbs exhausted of air.

In l875 apparatus that could produce a sufficiently high vacuum became available, following Sir William Crookes’ modification of Sprengel's mercury vacuum pump, and it was then only a matter of time before someone produced a commercially viable lamp. The first to succeed was Joseph Swan, followed by Thomas Edison.

In l880 the industrialist and inventor Sir William Armstrong asked Swan to install forty five incandescent lamps at his country house, Cragside, Rothbury, Northumberland. This house already had the distinction of being the first in he world to be lit by hydroelectricity when, in l878, an arc lamp was installed to light the Picture Gallery.

The prospect of incandescent electric lighting had now become a reality, and this provided an initial flurry of investment based on false expectations that electricity would soon be as cheap as gas. The first public electricity supply station was established in Godalming in l881, but the venture soon proved unprofitable.

Early in the following year an electricity undertaking was set up in Brighton, and so successful was the enterprise that the town can claim to have the longest continuous public electricity supply in the world. However, the abuses and exploitation of consumers by water and gas supply companies earlier in the century had not been forgotten, and as a result legal measures were swiftly introduced to curb the excesses of the emerging electrical industry.

The effect of the first Electric Lighting Act (1882) was to inhibit investment, and this caused share prices to plummet. The subsequent Electric Lighting Act (1888) went some way to inspire confidence. Restrictive legislation was nonetheless a key factor in the slow development of electricity supply stations, with the result that for many years those who wanted electricity had to generate their own power. This was particularly the case for owners of country properties.

A major problem for consumers was the repercussions of over-demand at peak periods, which at worst produced a complete failure of supply, or at best caused the current to fluctuate and surge, resulting in poor quality light or lamp breakages.

In l881 Swan's carbon filament lamps cost the enormous sum of 25s each but, as demand increased, lamp prices were reduced to 5s each within a year. In l882 Edison set up the Edison Electric Light Company in London and began legal proceedings against Swan for patent infringement. A lengthy court battle was avoided when the companies amalgamated in l883.

The master patent held by the Edison & Swan United Company was ruthlessly enforced, with the result that other lamp manufacturers were driven out of business, and cheaper foreign lamps could not be legally sold. The consequence for consumers was that they paid an artificially high price for their lamps which, for most of the ten monopoly years, was 3s 9d each.

The company's stranglehold on the industry had the effect of stultifying research in England, and Swan made only one further improvement to his original lamp in l883 with the introduction of a filament made from 'squirted cellulose'.

When the Edison & Swan master patent expired in September l893, their lamp prices were slashed to 1s 9d. From then onwards the company faced fierce competition from other manufacturers, particularly those who later obtained licences to manufacture a new generation of lamps that were being developed abroad.

In the late l890s a series of lamps with metal filaments began to appear on the market, the osmium, tantalum and Nernst lamps. But by the time initial difficulties with these lamps had been overcome, they were almost immediately superseded by lamps with tungsten filaments that were first introduced in l909. Improvements in tungsten lamps increased efficiency, and by l914 consumers could buy 32 cp. lamps that used the same amount electricity as a 16 cp lamp.

In the course of perfecting the electric lamp, Edison and his research team in the United States designed all the components and accessories that were required for a complete electrical installation, such as parallel circuits, fuses, switches and meters.

In Britain, however these products were only developed piecemeal and in the early years it was left to those responsible for installations to design and make any components. Although some components, such as fuses, had to be developed specifically for the new technology, more complex accessories like plugs and points only appeared on the market as electricity became more widespread. The dearth of standardised manufactured components bedevilled the electrical industry and it was largely through the efforts of Hugo Hirst, who founded GEC in l887, that order was brought into chaos.

The best way forward for the future generation of electricity was for many years hotly disputed by the leading electricity engineers of the day. The advocates for direct current (DC) included Edison, Crompton and Lord Kelvin and the promoters of alternating current (AC) were Sebastian de Ferranti, Charles Parsons and Charles Merz.

Both systems had advantages and disadvantages. DC was safer as, at this time, only low voltages were produced for domestic use and the current could be stored in batteries (accumulators); but the system lost power over distance. Although AC could not be stored, transformers enabled the current to be transmitted at very high voltages over long distances without losing power. For large-scale generation, DC eventually lost out to polyphase AC, which was a development of the l890s. For the smaller individual installation of the domestic consumer, low voltage DC continued to be preferred.

In the l890s large scale generation over a wide area became economically feasible following Nikola Tesla's work on polyphase AC frequencies, and Charles Parsons’inventions of steam turbines and radial-flow alternators. In the early years of the 20th century, large power stations began to be established. With greater economies of scale and increased competition between supply companies, the price of electricity decreased annually between l900 and l914, enabling middle class householders to become the new consumers of electricity.

Until l900 virtually all demand for electricity had been for domestic lighting, as power for industrial uses continued to be supplied by steam and gas engines. The development of power stations, however, made electricity an attractive, modern and cost effective proposition for industry. This change was recognised in legislation that was adjusted to take account of industrial demands, which required a supply of higher voltage.

By l909 many power stations were supplying 200-250 volts, and this was to have implications for domestic consumers in terms of the lamps and appliances they could use. Despite these shifts in demands, electricity supply continued to be unco-ordinated and fragmented. In this haphazard situation the supply industry had to be taken in hand, and in l925 the Weir Committee recommended standardisation and the setting up of a 'national gridiron'.

The first stage of construction was completed in l934, and the network of power supply made possible by the National Grid dramatically affected the numbers of connected houses, which rose from 31 per cent in l931 to 65 per cent in l938. Ten years later this had increased to 85 per cent. By the time the newly elected Labour government nationalised the industry in l948, electric lighting was no longer considered a luxury.