How did electricity start a second industrial revolution?

Electricity started a second industrial revolution by changing how power reached machines. Instead of hanging off one big engine through shafts and belts, each machine could have its own electric motor.

It wasn't the only change. Between about 1870 and 1914, steel, oil and the telegraph also reshaped industry. But electricity remade the factory floor itself.

The science came first. Michael Faraday invented the generator in 1831. It then took nearly fifty years for the technology to catch up. In 1879, Joseph Swan's light bulbs lit Mosley Street in Newcastle, the world's first electric street lighting. In 1881, about 1,200 of his lamps lit London's Savoy Theatre, the first public building lit entirely by electricity.

Then came power stations. London's Holborn Viaduct plant opened in 1882. In 1891, Sebastian de Ferranti's station at Deptford sent alternating current at 10,000 volts into central London. Transformers stepped it down on each street. Power now travelled by wire.

That changed the factory. Before, one central engine drove every machine through line shafts and belts. Now factories switched to electric motors. Henry Ford said mass production needed electricity, because it let him place machines in the order of the work. His Model T used 32,000 machine tools, most of them electric. Electric light also replaced hot, smoky gas lamps.