Great Moments in Energy History

Ever since 4 billion years ago when our earliest protozoan ancestor slouched the earth looking for highly excited electrons to cut down a few quantums, energy has been an important part of life on earth. Here are some highlights:

10,000 BC: Humans develop agriculture, thus providing the first form of regular and reliable base-load generation. No longer do men need to wait for a half-eaten carcass to show up at the cave in order to have a good meal.

4,000 BC: Draught animals are domesticated, thus allowing humans to utilize energy stored in grass and other such indigestible sources.

2,251 BC: The Great Pyramid of Giza is built with nothing else but the energy of human brawn. Egyptian seers laugh at the ineptitude of Boston’s Big Dig.

500 AD: Bedouin nomads in the Middle East begin raising camels in arid zones and selling them as draught animals, thereby effecting a useful transfer of energy from arid zones to population centers. Meanwhile in Europe, where population density is too high to maintain draught animals, people develop windmills and waterwheels for additional energy.

1698 AD: Thomas Savery invents the steam engine, causing dinosaurs to turn in their graves. They are later exhumed.

2004 AD: 6,000 years of draught-animal utility are rolled back as Jamba Juice begins feeding its customers wheat grass.

2009 AD: Federal subsidies in the United States lead to a wave of wind and solar energy developments, with the apparent goal of returning us to an intermittent-energy society. Pre-historic farmers wonder why they ever bothered to invent agriculture.

2010 AD: A post about energy appears on “Yesterday’s Salad”, introducing a new level of reductionist absurdity to the blog’s miscellany.