Community Versus Independent Use Of Energy example essay topic

The production and use of energy with respect to the technical, organizational, and cultural aspects during the Middle Ages and the 19th and 20th centuries provide both similarities and differences. The technical differences are a matter of source of energy. During the middle ages, energy came from water, while during the 19th and 20th century it came from electricity. Organizationally speaking, both time periods show a dependency of the source of energy while efficiency of standardization also is present. With reference to the cultural differences, the production and use of energy during the Middle Ages was a centralized feature, while electricity could be delivered to individual residences and used on demand at a citizen's leisure.

At the same time, the communities were drawn together for different reasons, and the use of the energy sources promoted community growth. The primary energy source in the Middle Ages was moving water in the form of rivers, streams, millponds, and tide ponds. This energy source was harnessed in the form of a mill using a waterwheel. With gears and camshafts, a means for grinding or pounding of goods such as the grinding of corn, crushing of olives, fulling of cloth, tanning of leather, and pounding metal was possible. The technology itself, for the time, was not new. It had existed and was used minimally during the Roman times, however was not very common due to the abundance of human power in the form of slavery.

During the Middle Ages, the waterwheel mill grew in popularity due to the lack of manpower and became a centralized source of production in townships. The organizational aspect of these mills was a matter of economic dependence. Without these mills, the majority of the townships would not have prospered. The mill provided a source of income for the citizens as they could bring their goods to be process and in turn sell or trade them.

With regard to mill processing standardization, it was not prevalent in the small townships, however was used by the Cistercian Monasteries. Although separated by thousands of miles, the Monasteries that stretched across Portugal, Sweden, Scotland, and Hungary were all very similar in layout. The goods that were processed may have varied, however the method and layout in which the energy was harnessed and used was near identical. This discipline proved to be very profitable.

The occurrence of lawsuits that occurred over the mills can be considered a combination of the organizational and cultural aspect. Whether it was due to one mill being too close upstream from another or a mill owner building their dam height too high, these lawsuits were not uncommon and in the example of La Dau rade vs. Le Baza cle in 1356 could last over half a century. The cultural aspect that is associated with the mills is one on centralization. A mill was not something that every citizen in a community would be in possession of, rather there would be one mill location which part of or the entire community would share. The mills, in many cases, were meeting places. The members of the community would line up and take turns using the mill to process their respective goods.

In some of these communities, the mills would spawn into large places of trade of all goods including prostitution. This brought communities together and promoted community growth. During the 19th and 20th century, the introduction of electricity became to be the primary source of energy for individuals in communities. The technical aspect of electricity was one of a power station that would produce an amount of electricity, dependent on its size, powered by a coal-fired steam boiler driving a dynamo that generated direct current. The electricity produced by the plant was then distributed to the individual citizens via power lines.

The electricity could be used on demand by the citizens for lighting and appliances, and the community as a whole for street lighting and electric light rail. The organizational aspect of electricity can be examined as a source of energy that was originally produced and distributed by individual proprietors. However, as demand grew, and unforeseen events including fires that burnt generating plants to the ground, the individual power plants would be bought out and become part of a pyramid of holding companies, eventually spawning into a national grid. It is important to keep in mind that as the use of electricity grew throughout the communities, so did their dependence on it. The electricity was not only used by the citizens, but by businesses such as department stores, and transportation services like light rail. The light rail service, powered by electricity, was used to connect communities to one another.

The cultural aspect of electricity was one that opened a new world to the people, as never before had there been light without flame. With electricity as a new source of energy, it could be used to power various on-demand household appliances. In the early years of electricity, there were smokestacks that were products of the generating plants, and were at first passed off as monuments to progress, however as demand increased, the generating plants themselves would be moved to the outskirts of town due to the coal smoke produced. An unintended, cultural aspect that formed itself was the development of amusement park, typically located and the ends of the electric light rail lines that existed between small communities. Created to supplement the decline of electricity use at nighttime, they were a source of income for the producers of the electricity.

They also acted as a cultural influence, which spurred the progression of the use of electricity. Although separated in hundreds of years, the aspects of production and use of energy in the Middle Ages and the 19th and 20th centuries were technically far apart, however organizationally and culturally had many similarities. Organizationally, there is an ever-growing dependency on the energy, with a close relationship on standardization. Culturally, the community versus independent use of energy was different, while the mills and the amusement parks drew the people of the communities together, and overall the use of the energy brought the communities together and improved growth.