In October of 1867 naturalist John Muir was in the middle of a thousand-mile walk through the South when he met a cotton planter, Mr. Cameron, on his farm outside of Augusta, Georgia. He predicted that “the time is coming, though we may not live to see it, when that mysterious power or force, used now only for telegraphy, will eventually supply the power for running railroad trains and steamships, for lighting, and, in a word, electricity will do all the work of the world.”