None of these people set out to build the modern world. Most were craftsmen, apprentices, and working engineers with no guarantee anything they touched would matter, chasing one stubborn idea far past the point where quitting would have been reasonable. A handful of them changed how billions of people would eventually live, and most of them never knew it while they were alive to see it.
Hans Christian Ørsted
Noticed a compass needle twitch near a live wire, and accidentally founded a whole field of physics.
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Michael Faraday
A bookbinder's apprentice with no formal training who discovered electromagnetic induction and built the first generator.
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Joseph Henry
Discovered induction a year before Faraday. Rarely gets credit for it. This is that credit.
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Hippolyte Pixii
An instrument maker who turned Faraday's discovery into an actual working machine within a year.
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Nikola Tesla
Patented the AC induction motor that made the modern grid possible, after being written off by most of the industry.
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Thomas Edison
Lost the War of the Currents, but built the first real commercial electric grid and the business model behind it.
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George Westinghouse
Bet his company on an unproven inventor, then funded the legal defense of a man his own equipment was used to execute.
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William Stanley Jr.
Built the transformer that made AC power practical, largely alone, through a Massachusetts winter. Rarely mentioned.
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Galileo Ferraris
Discovered the same principle as Tesla, on almost the same timeline, and never patented a word of it.
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