There are few more powerful symbols of modern industrial society than the high-voltage electrical transmission lines that bring electricity from the power stations where it is generated to the urban consumers, individual and industrial alike. Modern society is, above all, an electrical society such is its dependence on this rather peculiar energy source, which cannot be stored but which can be put to a multitude of uses.

The nature of the product itself meant that societies had to place great reliance on the technical expertise of engineers so that there has long been a tension between their professional opinions regarding safety and security of supply and the demands of economic rationality. The technical characteristics of electricity generation and supply meant that there were considerable economies of scale such that electricity was long regarded as the classical example of a natural monopoly. This in turn meant that societies had to deal with this economic problem and usually did so by one of two means: regulation or public ownership. Private ownership with regulation was often – although not always – the path followed in the United States, but the response of both Britain and most of its other former colonies was eventually to go down the path of public ownership. While this choice of policy sometimes reflected the views on public ownership of democratic socialist parties, it often resulted from governments (regardless of political persuasion) assuming responsibility for failed private undertakings, and often it was necessary to facilitate mining or other industrial development.