Historical overview of electric industry in France: 1880–1946

Discovery and beginning use of electricity

France played an outstanding part in basic scientific and technical discoveries for industrial and domestic usage of electricity. However, industrial and commercial applications were long to come, compared to the United States, Germany, and Switzerland.

In August 1881, the First Exhibition of Electricity held in Paris revealed foreign competition's vitality in the scientific domain and the American and German significant lead in industrial and commercial applications. Convinced of the commercial interest of electric innovations, industrialists from those countries were rushing in a patent race.

French researchers were involved very early in hydroelectric industrial specialties: electrochemistry and electrometallurgy. The first French industrialists interested in electric power were paper manufacturers installed on the Alps rivers' banks. Using until then the mechanical power of running water (with watermills), and willing to improve their performance, they became the pioneers of hydroelectric industry in the Alps. However, their production was restricted to the needs of paper manufacturing.

Because of their huge electricity consumption, electrochemical and electrometallurgical industries started off the rise of the use of hydroelectricity in France. These two technologically advanced industries generated the first great hydroelectric installations in the Alps as early as 1890. They alone escaped foreign rule. Rapidly, electrochemical and electrometallurgical firms improved their knowledge in electricity production and transportation enough to be able to sell the energy surplus to nearby towns and villages (among them Lyon and Grenoble).