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Mankind first harnessed fire approximately 100,000 years ago. It was useful for keeping warm and warding off predators, as well as for cooking.
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According to the report of an early missionary to China, coal was already being burned there for heating and cooking, and had been so employed for up to 4000 years.
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The vertical waterwheel, invented perhaps two centuries before the time of Christ, spread across Europe within a few hundred years. By the end of the Roman era, waterwheels powered mills to crush grain, full cloth, tan leather, smelt and shape iron, saw wood, and carry out a variety of other early industrial processes.
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While the Spaniard first patented a steam-operated machine for use in mining, an Englishman is usually credited with inventing the first steam engine. In 1698, Thomas Savery, an engineer and inventor, patented a machine that could effectively draw water from flooded mines using steam pressure.
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The battery made by Volta is credited as one of the first electrochemical cells. It consists of two electrodes: one made of zinc, the other of copper. The electrolyte is either sulfuric acid mixed with water or a form of saltwater brine.
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By the late 1830s, alcohol blends had replaced increasingly expensive whale oil in most parts of the country... By 1860, thousands of distilleries churned out at least 90 million gallons of alcohol per year for lighting.
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The first solar power system was developed in France to produce steam to drive machinery
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Edison made the first public demonstration of his incandescent light bulb on December 31, 1879, in Menlo Park. It was during this time that he said: "We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles."
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The first commercial scale hydroelectric plant went into operation in Appleton, Wisconsin.
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In December 1938, over Christmas vacation, physicists Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch made a startling discovery that would immediately revolutionize nuclear physics and lead to the atomic bomb.
