Transcript

And then there was light. I've got one minute to tell you about the beginnings of municipal electricity. I'm talking about light because that was the first electric invention with the electric light bulb. Thomas Edison invented this in 1879. Edison was American, so the first electrified city in the world was New York. NY was followed by Paris, then London and Berlin. Electricity gradually replaced gas for street lighting at the end of the 19th century, marking an industrial and social revolution. In France, light was brought into people's homes in the form of the lamp populaire, a single light bulb distributed to each household, which had to be turned off by 11:00 PM. And that is how, starting with light, the scientific curiosity of electricity became an essential part of our everyday life.