Hawaiian Electric was inspired by a King
I saw this post on Mastodon and went to do my own research (as we all should do.) Specifically it was around the electrification of Hawaii prior to the US taking it over:
I found a number of partial articles via IEEE, but this linked one is more of a PR piece about the Hawaiian Electrical company.
Hawaiian Electric may be the only electric utility in the United States - perhaps in the world - inspired to go into business by the vision and enthusiasm of a king.
That king was David Kalakaua, a monarch with a technical and scientific bent and an insatiable curiosity for modern devices. In an era of gas lamps, Kalakaua was shrewd enough to recognize the potential of "electricity," and helped pioneer its introduction in the Hawaiian kingdom. His vision led to the formation of Hawaiian Electric and the services it has since provided for over a century have paralleled the economic growth and modernization of the State of Hawaii.
It was the late 1870s, and "electricity" was the talk of society. The king had heard and read about this revolutionary new form of energy, but he needed further evidence of its practical application. Who better to get this information from than Thomas Edison, inventor of the incandescent lamp? Kalakaua arranged to meet Edison in New York in 1881 during the course of a world tour.
It's important to realize that non-indigenous history doesn't always properly reflect the reality of the conquered people. And, more directly, that often it benefits the narrative to belittle and talk-down the technology and civilization of those people.
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