
36 The Rising Sun in a Developing World
light is the first application people are interested in. Before that
momentous day, petroleum lamps were employed for most indoor
uses, and gas lamps provided street lighting. After Edison unveiled
his first power plant, electricity went global very quickly: Paris had
its first power plant in 1888; by 1900, the Parisian Metro had already
gone electric.
It is important to realise how recent the availability of electricity
to us really is. When my own father was born, at the end of the 19th
century, the family had no electricity—because nobody anywhere
had electricity! Even today, with nearly 7 billion of us, one in ...