America250: A Timeline of Powering Progress Across the United States

America's investor-owned electric companies have powered innovation and economic growth throughout America's 250 years.

Tracing their origins back to Thomas Edison's Pearl Street Station, America's first commercially operated power plant, electric companies have supplied the United States with the reliable, affordable energy needed to power revolutionary inventions like at-home refrigerators, television sets, central heating and air conditioning systems, personal computers, and smart phones.

“Electricity Has Built an Empire in America,” read a headline in The New York Times published June 22, 1930. “In 50 years since the incandescent lamp was invented, it has brought about a revolution of life and industry.”

The growth of electricity was rapid in the United States between 1900 and 1950. By 1908, roughly 10 percent of American households were connected to the grid. That number would expand to 90 percent by 1949.

“Electricity is a modern necessity of life, not a luxury. That necessity ought to be found in every village, in every home, and on every farm in every part of the United States,” President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said during an address in 1932.