Electric Nation – Andrew G.

The film, Electric Nation, was a very interesting and informative documentary.  It told a lot of information about how the United States got it’s electrical power system.  In the movie it does a good job of showing how much of an impact electricity had on Americans and still does today .  Towards the end of the movie when Edison dies there is an idea that they should turn off all the electricity for a minute to honor Edison. By this point in time Americans were so dependent on electricity that this request was not able to be met.  One of the biggest parts in Edison’s career was when he took on the job of lighting up the area around Pearl Street.  This was his chance to prove himself and his system to the world.  Edison did succeed and his business became very profitable.  One of the people who rose to the top of the his company was Samuel Insull.  He originally was Edisons personal secretary that later became a man that tried to bring cheap electricity to everyone.  He was able to start doing this by creating a new generator that could create energy in a more efficient way. Insull also had the idea of linking different places together to form a grid, this would also allow some of the smaller farmlands to get electricity.  Everything was going great until the stock market crash.  Insull also sold some stock in his company to his customers so they were not happy when all thier money disappeared.  Roosevelt took a separate approach to getting electricity to everyone, he had the government do it.  The TVA (Tennessee Vally Authority) was created in order to get cheap reliable energy to everyone in the Tennessee Valley.  Some people such as Robert Wilkie were against this because their own electric company’s supplied some of those areas and could not compete with the government.  It was later settled by the government buying up all the properties that Wilkie owned.  Having the government run the electricity worked out in a good way because it was then cheap electricity for everyone.