10 Key Historical Energy Events, by Skyler Orellana

  • The First Steam Engine

    The First Steam Engine
    A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid, and generate power that could be transmitted to machines.
  • The First Battery

    The First Battery
    Volta developed the first electrical battery. This battery, known as the Voltaic Cell, consisted of two plates of different metals immersed in a chemical solution.
  • The First Electric Light

    The First Electric Light
    The electric light, one of the everyday conveniences that most affects our lives, was not “invented” in the traditional sense in 1879 by Thomas Alva Edison.
  • The Fuel Cell

    The Fuel Cell
    Sir William Robert Grove developed the first fuel cell, a device that produces electrical energy by combining hydrogen and oxygen.
  • Solar Power

    Solar Power
    Alexandre Edmond Becquerel discovered the photo voltaic effect explaining how electricity can be generated from sunlight.
  • The Water Turbine

    The Water Turbine
    Engineer James Francis developed the first modern water turbine which remains the most widely used water turbine in the world today.
  • First Oil Well

    First Oil Well
    The first oil well successfully produced oil and gas in large quantities and provided economic substantiation to the U.s.
  • The Wind Turbine

    The Wind Turbine
    The windmill was hugely successful as a means of pumping water on farms and ranches in the expanding western frontier, created by Charles Bush.
  • The First Automobile

    The First Automobile
    Henry Ford, William Durant, J. Frank and Charles Duryea all contributed to the designing of the first successful American gasoline automobile.
  • The First Nuclear Power Plant

    The First Nuclear Power Plant
    The Shippingport Atomic Power Station was the world’s first full scale atomic electric power plant exclusively for peacetime uses.