Another electricity update

There are two kinds of public electricity. One is called DC which was promoted by Edison. The other kind is called AC which was promoted by Tesla and is what we use today. AC won out a long time ago for good reason.

Now here In rural Tennessee, like Monterey on the Cumberland Plateau, we are pretty used to electricity on demand these days. Rural electrification occurred around the 1940’s or so, I think. So more to many, things like washing machines and refrigerators and freezers became very useful. So did telephones. And we bought them and used them.

So is electricity on demand a “right”? For example do we expect that the lights will come on when we turn the switch. Do we expect that our refrigerators and freezers will work 24/7/365? Do we even bother to understand where all this “energy” came from?

The alternatives, like oil lamps and candles, like we are taught Lincoln learned by, are not as good. In other words, rural electrification was a benefit to most rural Americans at the time, who both enjoyed the benefit, and probably voted for their benefit, too. And they probably spent their money at their time to even buy things like washing machines and refrigerators and freezers. They probably even hooked up a telephone, and paid for it.

In my experience, even my mother’s father had a telephone number like 7, later 7 and 22, in this then rural town called Franklin, Tn, circa 1930’s or 1940’s.

So which way are we common citizens going to go in regards our electricity usage?