Energy

Topics represented

Energy (34) · Infrastructure (34) · Technology (34) · Climate & environment (5) · Armas nucleares (3) · Cambio climático (3) · Disuasión (3) · War & military technology (3) · Política climática (3) · Adaptación (2) · Science (2) · Física nuclear (2)

Records and sources

Ordered by start date. Long lives and processes may begin before the period you want to study.

1. c. 400000 BCE

   Fire-making technology

   Evidence from Barnham, England points to repeated fire-making and use around 400,000 years ago. It marks controlled thermal energy, not a single date for every human use of fire.

2. c. 50 BCE

   Watermills for mechanical work

   Water wheels were already turning millstones by about 50 BCE. This use of flowing water converted natural energy into mechanical work long before industrialization.

3. 1712

   Newcomen steam engine

   Thomas Newcomen’s piston engine enabled coal-powered pumping from mines. It opened a new scale for extracting fuel and mechanizing work.

4. 1769

   Watt’s improved steam-engine patent

   James Watt patented a decisive steam-engine improvement. Its later rotary applications helped bring steam power into factories and transport.

5. 1800

   Voltaic pile

   Alessandro Volta’s pile supplied continuous electric current, making electricity a reproducible energy source in the laboratory and later in practical technologies.

6. 1831

   Electromagnetic induction

   Michael Faraday’s experiments showed how relative motion between magnets and conductors generates current. The principle made generators and electric grids possible.

7. 1859

   Drake Well and the modern oil industry

   Edwin Drake’s drilled well in Pennsylvania triggered the modern oil boom. It was not petroleum’s first use, but a turning point for commercial extraction by drilling.

8. 1882

   Pearl Street Station and commercial electric service

   Pearl Street Station began supplying light and power to customers in Manhattan. It marks the shift from isolated devices to urban systems of generation and distribution.

9. 1884

   Parsons steam turbogenerator

   Charles Parsons’s prototype combined a multistage steam turbine with a high-speed electrical generator. The turbine offered a more compact, efficient alternative to the reciprocating engine and became a forerunner of power-station turbogenerators; it was not the sole origin of modern generation.

10. 1887

    Wind power for electricity generation

    James Blyth used a wind generator to power his Scottish home; that same year Charles Brush built a larger turbine in the United States. They are early precedents for modern wind electricity.

11. 1896

    Alternating-current transmission from Niagara

    An 11,000-volt line carried hydroelectricity from Niagara Falls to Buffalo. Alternating-current transmission made it possible to separate generation and consumption over long distances.

12. 1901–1954

    Enrico Fermi

    An Italian-American physicist who worked in quantum, nuclear, and particle physics. His role in the first controlled nuclear reactor should be read alongside the teams, institutions, and energy and military consequences of the period.

13. 1912–1997

    Chien-Shiung Wu

    An experimental physicist born in China who led the 1956–1957 experiment on parity violation in beta decay. This entry distinguishes her experimental demonstration from theoretical formulation and later recognition.

14. 1942

    Chicago Pile-1 and controlled fission

    Chicago Pile-1 achieved the first human-made controlled, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. The experiment demonstrated the technical possibility of controlled fission-energy release; its subsequent civilian and military uses followed distinct institutional and ethical trajectories.

15. 1942–1945

    Manhattan Project, nuclear weapons, and emergent deterrence

    From 1942, the Manhattan Engineer District organized a secret infrastructure bringing together science, industry, labour, and military command to produce the first nuclear weapons. Their use in 1945 opened an unprecedented strategic problem; nuclear deterrence developed as a system and doctrinal language chiefly after the war, so this entry treats it here as an emerging possibility, not an already settled doctrine or a sole explanation for the war’s end.

16. c. 1945–c. 1991

    Nuclear deterrence and the mutual-assured-destruction debate

    During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union organized nuclear forces to retain retaliatory capacity and deter a first strike. The term “mutual assured destruction” (MAD) described a family of ideas about reciprocal vulnerability and force survivability, not an identical doctrine accepted in the same way by both governments or a guarantee of peace. Crises, accidents, command arrangements, incomplete information, and arms control exposed its limits and risks.

17. c. 1953–c. 1962

    The R-7 ICBM and intercontinental nuclear delivery

    The Soviet Union authorized development of the R-7 in 1953; its 1957 tests and use as Sputnik’s launcher showed the connection between space rocketry and intercontinental ballistic missiles. The arrival of ICBMs shortened warning time and linked deterrence to alerting, command, and defence, but the early R-7 had vulnerabilities and limited deployment. A missile system alone did not amount to decision-making capacity, intelligence, or secure control.

18. 1954

    Obninsk nuclear power plant connected to the grid

    Obninsk in the USSR entered commercial operation as the world’s first nuclear power plant. It introduced nuclear fission as a grid-connected source of electricity.

19. 1954

    Bell Labs silicon solar cell

    Bell Labs demonstrated a silicon photovoltaic cell capable of powering everyday equipment. It established direct conversion of sunlight into electricity as a practical technology.

20. c. 1958

    Keeling Curve and continuous CO₂ measurement

    Measurements begun at Mauna Loa in 1958 created the longest continuous record of atmospheric carbon dioxide. For energy history, they made visible global accumulation associated mainly with burning coal, oil, and gas; one station does not by itself replace all climate records or attribute emissions to a particular country.

21. 1973–1974

    Oil crisis and the push for diversification

    The 1973–1974 embargo and crisis exposed dependence on oil imports. They spurred energy-security, efficiency, and research policies for solar, wind, and batteries.

22. 1986

    Environmental impact of the Chernobyl accident

    The April 1986 Chernobyl accident released radioactive material and led to deposition and contamination across land, forests, waters, and settlements in different regions. International assessments distinguish intense effects near the reactor from consequences that varied by radionuclide, ecosystem, distance, and time; this entry concerns environmental impact, not an equivalence among all nuclear systems or accidents.

23. 1986

    Chernobyl and international nuclear safety

    The accident at Chernobyl’s reactor 4 released large quantities of radioactive material and had lasting human, environmental, and social consequences. For energy, it exposed failures of design, operation, and communication and spurred international cooperation and safety standards; it does not justify treating all reactors or all risks as equivalent.

24. 1988

    Establishment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

    UNEP and the World Meteorological Organization established the IPCC in 1988 to provide policymakers with periodic assessments of knowledge about climate change. The IPCC assesses literature and does not itself make binding policy or conduct primary research; its reports sit within broader State and intergovernmental decisions.

25. 1988

    IPCC and scientific assessment for energy systems

    UNEP and WMO established the IPCC to periodically assess evidence on climate change, impacts, and response options. Its reports do not design power plants or set energy policy by themselves, but became a scientific-synthesis infrastructure for debating fuels, efficiency, electrification, and mitigation.

26. 1991

    Commercial rechargeable lithium-ion battery

    Sony commercialized the first rechargeable lithium-ion battery. High-density electrochemical storage became central to mobile electronics, electric vehicles, and grids.

27. 1997–2005

    Kyoto Protocol and flexible mechanisms

    The Kyoto Protocol was adopted in 1997 and entered into force in 2005. It operationalized the Framework Convention with targets for industrialized Parties and economies in transition, together with international emissions trading, joint implementation, and the Clean Development Mechanism. Its mechanisms were accounting, incentive, and verification instruments within agreed rules; their existence did not by itself demonstrate equivalent reductions or identical distributive outcomes.

28. 1997

    Kyoto Protocol and energy-related market mechanisms

    The Kyoto Protocol was adopted in 1997 and entered into force in 2005. For energy systems, it made reduction targets binding for covered industrialised Parties and created mechanisms such as emissions trading, joint implementation, and the Clean Development Mechanism. It was an accounting-and-incentive framework, not a guarantee of technological substitution or uniform outcomes across countries.

29. c. 2004–c. 2015

    United States shale-gas expansion

    The combination of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing drove rapid shale-gas expansion in the United States through the 2000s and 2010s. In 2015, shale gas accounted for more than half of US natural-gas production. It was a decisive change in North American supply, not evidence that the same technical, economic, or environmental path would automatically be replicated elsewhere.

30. c. 2010–c. 2023

    Scale-up of batteries for electricity grids

    Cost and performance improvements in lithium-ion batteries allowed storage to move from a niche to a grid-flexibility resource. In 2023, 42 GW of battery storage was added to the global power sector, across grid-scale projects, behind-the-meter systems, mini-grids, and solar home systems. Batteries help with short-duration services and stability, but do not by themselves replace transmission, firm generation, demand management, or resilient supply chains.