Electric power: Energy for the future. Life without electricity has become unimagineable

By founding the Siemens company in 1847, inventing the shuttle armature nine years later and, especially, by his discovery of the dynamo-electric principle in 1866, Werner von Siemens laid an essential foundation of electric energy supply. Today, electricity is available in the industrialized countries at every moment, whether day or night, deliverable in any quantity, usable without emissions or residual products, and obtainable at low cost. Electricity has come to be taken for granted, as is illustrated by the well-known joke: ''What do we need power stations for? Our power comes out of the plug socket.''. (orig.)