| This study argues that rural electrification in the United States began before the 1920s and that its scope extended beyond the technical range of central station electricity and beyond the political range of public power, as illustrated by the development of self-contained electrical generating plants for farms. After twenty years of discussion about electricity in agriculture, manufacturers began marketing standardized plants after 1910; sales peaked between 1916 and 1921. By 1929 half of all the electrified farms in the country used homemade electricity.;As a technology offering a pattern of energy use that was ultimately rejected by society, individual lighting plants present a fruitful avenue for studying rural electrification, for the circumstances surrounding their construction, dissemination, and use mirrored broader national themes and trends in the production and use of electricity.;The triple themes of profit, convenience, and efficiency pervaded promotion of lighting sets. Agricultural and electrical engineers saw them as tools for agrarian reform and the modernization of rural life. Utilities saw in them devices that reduced pressure to provide immediate rural service and prepared the way for future extension of rural lines. As a small power supply, they had their most dramatic effect upon household work and the lives of farm women, and farm families used them to help improve living and production standards.;The story of individual lighting sets faltered in the late 1920s. As electrical generating and distributing technology improved and the electrical generating business consolidated, an energy vision based on the large-scale generation and distribution of electricity seized the national imagination. Economic hard times for farmers restricted purchases in the 1920s, and abruptly halted them at the onset of the Depression in 1929. The advent of national political battles over control of the nation's electrical generating facilities in the 1930s effectively ended interest in a rural electrical system based upon small-scale, individually owned and operated generating facilities. |
