Keep The Lights On Two things all of us should learn from the big blackout: (1) We are addicted to electricity and cannot function without it. (2) Politicians have neglected America's infrastructure, which — like everything else — ages, wears out or gets outgrown. When Thomas Alva Edison invented the electric light bulb, the primary use of electricity was to provide illumination. My mother remembered the first time she ever saw an electric light bulb. She looked at it with awe and wonder. If illumination were still the only use we made of electricity, then power losses would be a...