In the book's preface, the author writes: "Let anyone stop to consider how he individually would be affected if all electrical service were suddenly to cease, and he cannot fail to appreciate the claims of electricity to attentive study."

In these days when we take for granted all kinds of technology - communications, entertainment, medical, military, industrial and domestic - it is interesting to learn what progress had been made in the fields of electricity and technology by the beginning of the 20th century.

Including the dawn of hydro-electric power, the x-ray, the phonograph, the telephone and the wireless telegraph, this book explains the pioneering work of the men who made our modern world possible, and sets us wondering what the next century may bring - providing that we do not manage to destroy our planet in the meantime.

The Gutenberg text of the 1915 edition (as recorded) does not have the benefit of the book's many diagrams. Also available, however, is an online book scan of the 1912 edition which includes the illustrations and coincides largely with the text recorded. (Summary by Ruth Golding)