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1.
How People Use Energy
Archive
of Past Articles for Chapter 1
2005.
Historical
Perspectives of Energy Consumption Excerpt:
Throughout history, man has developed
ways to expand his ability to
harvest energy. The primitive
man found in East Africa 1,000,000
years ago, who had yet to discover
fire, had access only to the food
he ate so his daily energy consumption
has been estimated at 2,000 Kcal
or 2,000 dietary calories. Energy
consumption of the hunting man
found in Europe about 100,000
years ago was about 2.5 times
that of the primitive man because
he had better methods of acquiring
food and also burned wood for
both heating and cooking. Energy
consumption increased again by
almost 2.5 times as man evolved
into the primitive agricultural
man of about 5,000 years ago
who harnessed draft animals to
aid in growing crops. The advanced
agricultural man of 1400 A.D.
northwestern Europe again doubled
the amount of energy consumption
as he began inventing devices
to tap the power of wind and water,
began to utilize small amounts
of coal for heating and harnessed
animals to provide transportation.
The dawn of the age of industrialization, ushered
in by the invention of the steam engine, caused a
3-fold increase in energy consumption by 1875. Among
other things, the steam engine allowed man to unlock
the Earth's vast concentrated storage deposits of
solar energy - coal, gas and oil so he no longer was
limited to natural energy flows. Whereas increases
in energy consumption had been gradual throughout
history, once industrialization occurred, the rate
of consumption increased dramatically over a period
of just a few generations. The technological man of
1970 in the U.S. consumed approximately 230,000 Kcal
of energy per day (~115 times that of primitive man)
with about 26% of that amount being electrical energy....
Archive
of Past Articles for Chapter 1
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