Electricity and Power at Local, Regional and National Levels

The "harnessing of nature's power" extends back into antiquity but is particularly associated with the dramatic agricultural and industrial shifts beginning in the 17th and 18th centuries as these played out in local communities and in international contests. The development of electrical power in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and its rapid implementation in domestic and industrial settings has been the subject of scholarly investigation. In the United States rapid developments of systems of electrical power as well as the expansion of electrical implements had been introduced into virtually every region of the country by the 1940s. The following materials are intended to frame those developments for the period of interwar period (between World War I and World War II) in the United States, particularly as the federal government became a major player in the development of hydroelectric power.