Electric Power in Victorian Britain

This four-volume collection of primary sources examines electric power in Victorian Britain. The first volume covers the works of the natural philosophers, mathematicians, engineers, and entertainers for whom electricity became a vessel to say new things about energy and create a new means of generating motive force. The papers, books, and experiments explore the ways in which electricity transforms from a force of nature into a source of energy. The second volume looks at how electric power imprinted on the political landscape of Great Britain and the Empire. Outside the lecture halls and laboratories, electric power became a source for inventors, politicians, economists, and the public to explore, define, and lament how energy consumption should look. The third volume reviews the formalization of electric power infrastructures or “grids” as they took shape on a local, national, and imperial scale. These sources highlight how sociocultural forces shaped the scientific and technological perceptions of efficiency and feasibility. The fourth and final volume focuses on how citizens, novelists, doctors, politicians, and electrical engineers imagined electric power networks impacting the present and future. Accompanied by extensive editorial commentary, this collection will be of great interest to students and scholars of the History of Science.