Click – wow! As if by magic, the gallery of Cragside House in Northumberland is illuminated by an electric lamp in 1878. The paintings on the room’s walls are suddenly bathed in what seems to be broad daylight, and the owner, engineer William George Armstrong, is beaming just as much as the artificial light.
For the first time ever, a house has been illuminated by means of hydroelectric power. The man behind the breakthrough is Armstrong himself, inspired by a local water mill. The visionary inventor has constructed a dam in a stream near his home, complete with a water reservoir that powers an 8-horsepower generator. The world’s first hydroelectric power plant is not very big, but its importance is huge. The power plant marks the beginning of an era in which people use the power of water to generate electricity – an era