In 1812 Frederick Winsor, a madcap entrepreneur, invented the general public utility. The concept behind his Fuel Mild and Coke firm, which might provide residents of London, was that as a substitute of every family shopping for its personal power—luggage of coal, bits of firewood—the stuff can be piped on to them from a central location. Extra prospects, with differing patterns of demand, would enable energy crops for use extra effectively. It was a pure monopoly: scale would unfold the price of the gasworks, the pipes and so forth throughout giant numbers of consumers, every spending lower than they’d individually to devour simply as a lot. The concept of “power as a service” unfold the world over.
