[Skip Kilmer] Thanks to Dave Barry for getting it right:
Edison's greatest achievement came in 1879, when he invented the electric
company. Edison's design was a brilliant adaptation of the simple electrical
circuit: The electric company sends electricity through a wire to a
customer, then immediately gets the electricity back through another wire,
then (this is the brilliant part) sends it right back to the customer again.
This means that an electric company can sell a customer the same batch of
electricity thousands of times a day and never get caught, since very few
consumers take the time to examine their electricity closely. In fact, the
last year in which any new electricity was generated in the United States
was in 1937; the electric companies have been merely reselling it ever
since, which is why they have so much free time to apply for rate increases.