1800 – Alessandro Volta dated a letter announcing his invention of the voltaic pile to Sir Joseph Banks, president of the Royal Society, London. We’ve been dealing with battery life ever since.
http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200603/history.cfm
1886 – The first alternating current power plant in the United States began providing power to Main Street in Great Barrington, Mass.
http://edisontechcenter.org/GreatBarrington.html
1916 – The Annalen der Physik received a paper titled ‘Die Grundlage der allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie’ by Albert Einstein. “The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity” changed physics and technology dramatically.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/andp.19163540702/abstract
Read Tom’s science fiction and other fiction books at Merritt’s Books site.