byAlma Abell

Commercial electric power supply only came into being some 130 plus years ago even though mankind had known about electricity since the prehistoric days when we first gazed upon lightning and thought about it. For the longest of times, philosophers and scientists studied and tried to explain both static and atmospheric electricity (particularly lightning). This became known as the study of electromagnetic theory. However, it took until late 16th century for the invented Latin word “electricus” to be coined.

Well Known Names

In 1675, Robert Boyle wrote about his research under the title of “Experiments on the Origin of Electricity”. Numerous natural philosophers continued the investigations but the next breakthrough came in the time of Benjamin Franklin and his famous kite flying during a lightning storm in around 1750. Franklin’s theories and the experiments of others formed the basis for more discoveries from the likes of Michael Faraday, Luigi Galvani, Alessandro Volta, André-Marie Ampère , Georg Simon Ohm and Heinrich Hertz; whose names are still used today in relation to electrical science.

However, electricity remained a somewhat academic (even esoteric) field of study that was not put to much practical use until around 1887 with the generation of alternating current and its transmission through transformers. It took the work of engineers such as Nikola Tesla, George Westinghouse, Thomas Edison and others to bring us to the point where electricity could become widely available to the general public – the electric lights for the World’s Columbian International Exposition of 1893 being a classic example.

Fast Forward To Today

Almost everywhere in the world now has some sort of public electricity supply and the arrangements for Illinois and Chicagoland are amongst the most advanced and best developed – to such an extent that people living there take it for granted that electricity always flows at the touch of a switch. But, things can still go wrong and one never quite knows when that switch might suddenly refuse to give out any electricity. It could be a planned maintenance outage or a black out resulting from a storm or other natural event; but, if you are at home one evening and suddenly plunged into darkness; you are not going to be happy. Especially if you look out the window and see your neighbor’s house still lit up!

How can that happen? Simple, they had the foresight to; not only install a home generator set; but, also to make sure that it was set up and given regular generator maintenance for river forest by tried and tested electrical engineers like those employed at Penco Electric Inc out of nearby Niles. Click here to browse the website.