When was electricity first harnessed for practical use?

While electricity had been studied for centuries, its practical use took off in the 1880s. Thomas Edison opened the Pearl Street Station in New York in 1882, one of the first central power plants to supply electricity to paying customers for lighting. The following decade saw the war of the currents between Edison direct current and the alternating current championed by Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse, which ultimately won out for long-distance power. Within a few decades electric light and power spread across the industrialised world.