Lighting and power

How people have made light and power: from the fire and the oil lamp to the waterwheel, steam, the electric grid, oil, the atom and the solar panel — and how each changed the working day and the night.

“Allah is the Light of the heavens and the earth … like a niche in which is a lamp, the lamp in glass, the glass like a brilliant star, lit from a blessed olive tree” (an-Nur 24:35). Electricity figures are world generation, rounded (Smil; Ember; Energy Institute).