#Lamp August 1

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August 2026 several of us are going to take on the 30-Day Plugged in Coach4aday Challenge. Each day, we will feature an item from home or office that requires being plugged into a source of electricity to operate. We will reflect on how it makes life easier. For Day 1 it is a LAMP.

As I wandered through the first floor of my home, I counted a total of fourteen electric lamps. They varied in size and style, but each was plugged into a wall outlet. During the winter months, when daylight hours grow shorter, those lamps allow my family to remain productive long after the sun goes down. It’s easy to take them for granted, yet electric lighting has been commonplace in American homes for less than a century.

Day 1-Lamp

It should come as no surprise that Thomas Edison’s invention of a practical, long-lasting incandescent light bulb in 1879 transformed American households. Lamps had existed for centuries, but they relied on candles, whale oil, or kerosene for illumination. Even so, it took nearly 50 years for electricity and electric lamps to become commonplace in most American homes as electrical service gradually spread across the country.

Expanding electrical service across America required resolving a fierce battle between two competing systems for delivering electricity: Direct Current (DC) and Alternating Current (AC). The so-called War of the Currents lasted nearly a decade, from about 1886 to 1896. Thomas Edison championed DC, which could transmit electricity only a short distance, while George Westinghouse and Nikola Tesla promoted AC, which could carry power much farther and more efficiently. The timeline below traces that historic debate and shows how AC’s victory paved the way for electric lamps to become a common feature in American homes.

War of Currents Timeline

The key milestones were:

• 1882: Thomas Edison opened the first commercial DC power station in New York City.
• 1886: George Westinghouse began installing AC power systems, using transformers to transmit electricity over much longer distances.
• 1888: Nikola Tesla licensed his AC motor and polyphase AC system patents to Westinghouse, giving AC a major technological advantage.
• 1888–1893: Edison aggressively campaigned against AC, claiming it was too dangerous. This period became known as the height of the War of the Currents.
• 1893: AC won a major victory when Westinghouse was awarded the contract to illuminate the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, demonstrating its reliability on a grand scale.
• 1895–1896: The opening of the Adams Power Plant Transformer House at Niagara Falls and the successful transmission of AC electricity to Buffalo, New York, effectively settled the debate in AC’s favor.

Rural America being left off the Electric Grid

Here is a YouTube Video talking about what it was like in 1910 and beyond with Electric Service coming to Rural America.