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Electrical Conquest

New Approaches to the History of Electrification

  • Book
  • © 2023

Overview

Editors:
  1. W. Bernard Carlson

    1. TechInnovation, University of Galway, Galway, Ireland

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    You can also search for this editor in PubMed   Google Scholar

  2. Erik M Conway

    1. California Institute of Technology, Pasdena, USA

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    You can also search for this editor in PubMed   Google Scholar

  • Provides a global perspective on the process of electrification with case studies from Cuba, New Zealand, and Greece
  • Based on multiple case studies and conceptual perspectives
  • Provides context for thinking about what lies ahead as humans continue their conquest of the earth through electricity

Part of the book series: Archimedes (ARIM, volume 67)

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Table of contents (9 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-ix
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Introduction

    • W. Bernard Carlson, Erik M. Conway
    Pages 1-20

  3. A Model for Heterogeneous Energy Transitions

    • David E. Nye
    Pages 21-50

  4. Surveying the Landscape: The Oil Industry and Alternative Energy in the 1970s

    • Cyrus C. M. Mody
    Pages 51-79Open Access

  5. “We Have no Niagara”: Electrifying the “Britain of the South”

    • Nathan Kapoor
    Pages 81-109

  6. Formation and Transformations of the Cuban Electric Company/Unión Eléctrica, 1920s–1980s

    • William J. Hausman, John L. Neufeld, Rui Pereira
    Pages 111-139

  7. Between Material Dependencies, Natural Commons and Politics of Electrical Transitions: State as Networks of Power in Greece, 1940–2010

    • Stathis Arapostathis, Yannis Fotopoulos
    Pages 141-171

  8. Large-Scale Renewables and Infrastructure Gatekeepers: How Local Actors Shaped the Texas Competitive Renewable Energy Zones (CREZ) Initiative

    • Julie A. Cohn
    Pages 173-207

  9. Co-ops Against Castroism: USAID and the Electrification of the Global Countryside

    • Abby Spinak
    Pages 209-249

  10. Vehicle-to-Grid, Regulated Deregulation, and the Energy Conversion Imaginary

    • Matthew N. Eisler
    Pages 251-280
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Keywords

About this book

This book, drawing on fresh scholarship, investigates electrification in new places and across different time periods. While much of our understanding of electrification as a historical process is based on the seminal work done by Thomas P. Hughes in Networks of Power (1983), the scholars in this volume expand and revise Hughes’ systems approach to suggest that electrification is a heterogeneous and contingent process. Moreover, the contributors suggest that the conquest of the world by electricity remains incomplete despite more than a century elapsing. Above all, though, this book provides context for thinking about what lies ahead as humans continue their conquest of the earth through electricity. As we become increasingly dependent on electricity to power our lights, heat and cool our homes, turn the wheels of industry, and keep our information systems humming, so we are ever more vulnerable when the grid runs into trouble.



Chapter "Surveying the Landscape: The Oil Industry and Alternative Energy in the 1970s" is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Editors and Affiliations

  • TechInnovation, University of Galway, Galway, Ireland

    W. Bernard Carlson

  • California Institute of Technology, Pasdena, USA

    Erik M Conway

About the editors

W. Bernard Carlson manages the M.Sc programs in TechInnovation and AgInnovation at the University of Galway in Ireland.  He is also the Joseph L. Vaughan Emeritus Professor of Humanities  at the University of Virginia. He is also a lecturer in the Tech Innovate program at the National University of Ireland Galway. He has written widely on inventors and electrical history, and his books include Innovation as a Social Process: Elihu Thomson and the Rise of General Electric, 1870-1900 (Cambridge University Press, 1991) and Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age (Princeton University Press, 2013).

Erik M Conway is an independent scholar and an author on seven books, including Merchants of Doubt and The Big Myth, both with Naomi Oreskes, and Exploration and Engineering: The Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Quest for Mars.


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