“Cultures of Power” tells the story of the electrification of greater Los Angeles from the first introduction of electric light in 1882 through 1969. Whereas scholars have previously examined how electrification has either preceded urbanization or amended pre-existing urban forms, in Southern California these two processes took place simultaneously, with each indelibly shaping the other. The result was not only a new model of American urbanism, but also a transformative approach to electric system development that shaped that industry’s growth worldwide. Greater Los Angeles and its electric systems, I argue, emerged from a decades-long process of co-creation fueled by differing perceptions of local landscapes, regional political conflict, and an emerging local mass culture fixated on electric symbols and products. I use this decades-long arc to illustrate how electricity’s social prominence shifted in response not merely to the passage of time and the growing familiarity of electric technologies, but rather as a consequence of choices made by Angeleno institutions and individuals.

The Schottky barrier heights of silver and lead contacts on n-type GaN (0001) epilayers were determined from current-voltage characteristics. The zero-bias barrier heights and the ideality factors were found to be linearly correlated. Similar observations were previously reported for metal contacts on Si (111) and GaAs (110) surfaces. The barrier heights of ideal Schottky contacts are characterized by image force lowering of the barrier only. This gives an ideality factor of 1.01. From our data we obtain barrier heights of 0.82 eV and 0.73eV for ideal Ag and Pb contacts on GaN, respectively. The metal-induced gap states (MIGS) model predicts the barrier heights of ideal Schottky contacts on a given semiconductor to be linearly correlated with the electronegativities of the metals. The two important parameters of this MIGS-and-electronegativity model are the charge neutrality level (CNL) of the MIGS and a slope parameter. The CNL may be calculated from the dielectric band gap and using the empirical tight-binding method. The slope parameters are given by the optical dielectric constant of the respective semiconductor. The predictions of the MIGS model for metal/GaN contacts are confirmed by the results presented here and by barrier heights previously reported by others for Au, Ti, Pt, and Pd contacts on GaN.