Dynamo
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You might think electricity had an immediate and transformative impact on economic productivity. But you would be wrong. Thirty years after the invention of the useable light bulb, almost all American factories still relied on steam. Factory owners simply couldn\\u2019t see the advantage of electric power when their steam systems \\u2013 in which they had invested a great deal of capital \\u2013 worked just fine. Simply replacing a steam engine with an electric dynamo did little to improve efficiency. But the thing about a revolutionary technology is that it changes everything. And changing everything takes imagination. Instead of replacing their steam engines with electric dynamos, company bosses needed to re-design the whole factory. Only then would electric power leave steam behind. As Tim Harford explains, the same lag has applied to subsequent technological leaps \\u2013 including computers. That revolution might be just beginning.
Producer: Ben Crighton\\nEditors: Richard Knight and Richard Vadon
(Image: Dynamo AC exciter Siemens, Credit: Igor Golovniov/Shutterstock)
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