London's Pall Mall became the first street of any city to be illuminated by gaslight. By 1823 nearly 40,000 lamps had been installed in 215 miles of London streets. Earlier, in 1804, Frederick Albert Windsor, a German entrepreneur, demonstrated and lectured on gas light at the Lyceum Theatre in London. His main interest in gas was for street lighting. Windsor acquired a house in Pall Mall, London and on 4 Jun 1807, the King's birthday, he exhibited lights and a gas-lit transparency along the walls. In 1809-10, Windsor established the first public gas company, The Gas Light and Coke Company, which remained in existence until the company was nationalized in 1948. Other British cities followed London's lead, and installed gas street lamps. For example, Glasgow, Scotland, lit their first on 5 Sep 1818.

The first privately-owned thorium-uranium atomic reactor to supply power began construction of Buchanan, N.Y. The Consolidated Edison Company's Indian Point 1 nuclear generating station was the first designed to utilize uranium-235 supplemented with thorium-232. It was designed by the Babcock and Wilcox Co., and built at a cost of $100 million on the site of a former amusement park. Its pressurized water reactor produced 275,000 kW of power for part of the New York metropolitan area. The Indian Point 1 operating license was dated 26 Mar 1962. It began generating power on 16 Sep 1962. It was shut down on 31 Oct 1974.because it lacked an emergency cooling system for the reactor core.