Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Powering American Farms: The Overlooked Origins of Rural Electrification

Powering American Farms: The Overlooked Origins of Rural Electrification

Hirsh, Richard F.

Hardcover

Technology & Engineering20th Century United States HistoryGeneral Sociology

ISBN10: 1421443627
ISBN13: 9781421443621
Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr
Published: Jun 14 2022
Pages: 400
Weight: 1.70
Height: 1.30 Width: 6.20 Depth: 9.00
Language: English

The untold story of the power industry's efforts to electrify growing numbers of farms in the years before the creation of Depression-era government programs.

Winner of the 2025 IEEE William and Joyce Middleton Electrical Engineering History

Even after decades of retelling, the story of rural electrification in the United States remains dramatic and affecting. As textbooks and popular histories inform us, farmers obtained electric service only because a compassionate federal government established the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The agencies' success in raising the standard of living for millions of Americans contrasted with the failure of the greedy big-city utility companies, which showed little interest in the apparently unprofitable nonurban market. Traditional accounts often describe the nation's population as split in two, separated by access to a magical form of energy: just past cities' limits, a bleak, preindustrial class of citizens endured, literally in near darkness at night and envious of their urban cousins, who enjoyed electrically operated lights, refrigerators, radios, and labor-saving appliances.

Also in

Technology & Engineering

View All