January

When the Lights Came On in Rural Oklahoma

Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb in 1879, and his company started generating power in 1882, but electricity did not reach all the farms of Oklahoma until the mid 1940s.

Activities

1. Students will read about the History of Electricity in America (Smithsonian site) and write papers in which they discuss life without electricity then and now.
2. Students will search online to find out when electricity first came to your part of the state.

Pretend you are a radio reporter and do an on-the-scene report of the day the power came on in your town.

Benjamin Franklin, who famously flew a kite to capture the electricity from bolts of lightning, was born on January 17.