ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Early electrification of Chile: between transnational interests and sociotechnical imaginaries (1879 - 1896)

• In Event: Wires Across Borders: Transnational Perspectives on Electrical Histories

English Abstract

This presentation will analyse the relationship between electricity consumption and imaginaries about electrification in Chile through the first electric power plants installed by Edison’s companies. In the United States and Europe at the end of the nineteenth century, historians have shown that electricity was a business in competition with gas lighting, slowly incorporated in factories that needed more reliable ways of illumination. However, the historiography has neglected these links between electricity and industry in Chile during this period. Here, I will argue that global disputes around the expansion of electrification were replicated in Chile, from the patents to the competition between gas and electricity, being the latter a central element in explaining the failure of the Edison Electric Light Company of Santiago. In addition, the gas and electric lighting companies prioritised supplying commercial and wealthy residential customers, leaving the industry outside the central stations’ main consumers. However, factories and industrial processes incorporated electric light within production activities during this period, but through on-site plants (or isolated plants, which was the concept used at the time). The mining sector had also an early interest in electricity applications for power, although with unclear results. Finally, I will claim that Chilean engineers involved in the Edison company, who blurred the line between expert and stakeholder, reflected on these events to conclude what mistakes led this enterprise to fail in Santiago, highlighting the importance of supplying electricity to the industry. This reinforces that connections between Chileans and the Edison Electric Light Company help to understand how the industry could affect Chilean electrification in this period.

Author

• José Soto Vejar, King’s College London