ABSTRACT
The initial impetus to the development of the British electricity supply industry came in the late 1870s when Joseph Swan and Thomas Edison’s patented the electr ic l ight bulb. Unlike the arc lighting used in lighthouses, London theatres, Blackpool’s illuminations, and Sheffield’s floodlit football matches, this
new glass globe made it possible to harness electr ic i ty as a viable form of domest ic lighting. Businessmen were quick to realize electricity’s potential and despite the relatively speculative nature of the early undertakings many new companies were formed. By 1888, sixty-four private companies and seventeen
local authorities had been granted franchises by the government to supply electricity. Eight years later (see Map 4.15) most towns had access to electricity supplies. In the northern industrial areas many towns continued to be supplied by large private companies. But in London, while the wealthy residential districts of Kensington, Knightsbridge, Chelsea, and Westminster were supplied by private concerns, the newly developing suburbs of Isl ington, Hampstead, and Ealing were dominated by local authority undertakings (see Map 4.15). By the early twentieth century (see Map 4.16), electrification was continuing to spread into the suburbs (with municipal concerns often dominating the development), while the existing undertakings had considerably extended their generating capacity: the City of London Company, for example, had increased its station size from 1.5 MW in 1896 to 23 MW by 1907. However, although wealthy men like Lord
Armstrong and Lord Salisbury had had electricity instal led in their homes in the 1880s, the general public were more usually served by the cheaper and more reliable gas suppliers. As late as 1919 less than 6 per cent of the homes in Britain were wired for electricity, and it was in the electrification of tramways and railways and in the use of electricity as a means of lighting public streets and buildings that the impact was most noticeable.
