1) Electricity results from the presence and flow of electrical charge.
2) It is produced from coal, oil, nuclear power and other sources of natural energy.
3) The energy from electricity can never be destroyed; it is simply converted into other forms such as heat, light or power.
4) It’s hard to believe, but the generation of electricity began only just over 100 years ago.
5) The root of the word electricity can be found in the New Latin electricus, "amber-like", the classical Latin electrum, and in the Greek word elektron, meaning amber.
6) The power of electricity wasn’t really understood until the 18th century, but its existence was recorded even as far back as the time of the Ancient Egyptians.
7) In 1972, Benjamin Franklin is reputed to have attached a metal key to the bottom of a dampened kite string and flown it in a stormy sky. He observed a succession of sparks from the key to the back of his hand, showing that lightening was electrical in nature. From this experiment in Philadelphia the first principals of electricity were developed.
8) The invention of the light bulb, by Thomas Edison in the late 19th century helped change everyone’s lives; today lighting is one of the biggest uses of domestic energy in the UK.
9) Nikola Tesla pioneered the use of alternating current (AC) electricity, rather than direct current (DC) electricity, which can be transmitted over much greater distances. It is as a result of this man that we are able to have electricity in our homes.
10) In 2001, the Department of Transport and Industry reported that our use of electricity just keeps getting bigger. That year, the UK consumed electricity equivalent to over 240 million tonnes of oil, more than it had in the last thirty years!
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