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Coal was being burned for heating in cooking in China and was regarded as an inferior fuel because it produced so much soot and smoke. Until the 13th century, it was ignored in favor of wood.
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The vertical waterwheel spread across Europe within a few hundred years. Waterwheels powered mills to crush grain, full cloth, tan leather, melt and shape iron, saw wood, and carry out a variety of other early industrial processes. As productivity increased, dependence on human and animal muscle power gradually declined, and locations with good water-power resources became centres of economic and industrial activity.
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The first practical use of natural gas dates is attributed to the Chinese. They used it to make salt from brine in gas-fired evaporators, boring shallow wells and conveying the gas to the evaporators through pipes made from bamboo.
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They already applied petroleum to lamps as a lubricant, in medicine and for military actions. Similarly, the heating and evaporation of brine from flowing brine wells were used to produce edible salt was also developed.
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These primitive, vertical carousel-type mills utilized the wind to grind corn, and to raise water from streams to irrigate gardens.
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The machine, made by Thomas Newcomen pursued to carry coal out of mines so that muscle, animal and human, and sometimes watermills and windmills didn't have to be put to work lifting the water out of the mines. Coal would be burned to power the heat engine. It was the first machine to provide significantly large amounts of power not derived from muscle, water, or wind.
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English scientists William Nicholson and Sir Anthony Carlisle discovered that applying electric current to water produced hydrogen and oxygen gases. This discovery helped the development of hydro-energy and the hydrogen fuel cell.
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During most of the 19th century, natural gas was used almost exclusively as a source of light. Without a pipeline infrastructure, it was difficult to transport the gas into homes to be used for heating or cooking. Most of the natural gas during this time was produced from coal, as opposed to transported from a well. Near the end of the 19th century, natural gas lights were converted to electric lights.
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William Robert Grove improved a wet-cell battery. It was often referred to as the "Grove cell" that used a platinum electrode immersed in nitric acid and a zinc electrode in zinc sulphate to generate about 12 amps of current at about 1.8 volts. He used electricity to decompose water into hydrogen and oxygen.
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Albert Einstein wrote to president Franklin D. Roosevelt about the importance of research on nuclear chain reactions and the possibility of it leading to powerful bombs.
