By combining two forces known since ancient times into one working package,
nineteenth-century science laid the basis for a twentieth-century
technological revolution
ELECTRICITY and magnetism are two facets of the forces of nature that
humans have effectively brought under limited control. Nuclear forces, by
comparison, are hardly the sort of thing you want to unleash in your living
room. And we are still far from being able to generate gravity by machines, so
there are few domestic uses for it. But electromagnetism is the servant that
gives us light to see by, radio and TV waves for communications, power for…
