Rabbi Yudel Rosenberg quite famously held that electricity is permitted to be utilized on the holidays but not on the sabbath (see his pamphlet מאור החשמל). In the bookbiography "A Kabbalist in Montreal: The Life and Times of Rabbi Yudel Rosenberg" author Ira Robinson states (p. 131):
By the early twentieth century, a consensus within the Orthodox Jewish community had emerged whereby nearly all halakha-observant Jews refrained from turning electric lights on and off on the Sabbath.74 By contrast, in the first third of the twentieth century, the jury was definitely still out in these circles regarding the possibility of turning electric lights on and off on Jewish holidays.
RegardingRabbi Yudel Rosenberg held that electricity is permitted to be utilized on the holidays but not on the sabbath (see his pamphlet מאור החשמל). In fn#74 of the abovementioned biography Robinson notes that the consensus surrounding the refrain from turning lights on and off on the sabbath, footnote 74 clarifies thatwas not absolute:
Nonetheless, even that consensus was not completely uniform. One rabbi who held the opposite was Rabbi Yosef Zvi Dushinsky of Jerusalem. Menachem Keren-Kratz, “Mishmeret le-Moshmeret: R. Yosef Zvi (Maharitz) Dushinsky,” in The Gedoilim: Leaders Who Shaped the Israeli Haredi Society, ed. Binyamin Brown and Nissim Leon ( Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2017), 365. Thus Rabbi Rosenberg polemicizes against some Jews, whom he characterized as “light of intellect” [kalei ha-da‘at] who sought grounds to utilize electricity in this manner also on the Sabbath. Me’or, 7.
It would appear that, at least according to researcher Ira Robinson, while the subject of electricity usage on the holidays was in far greater fluxIn summary, there was a very large consensus disfavoring its use on the sabbath (not withstandingother than a very small minority, such (such as R. Dushinsky, that argued in favor of permitting it), the use of electricity on the sabbath was widely eschewed by the Orthodox community in the early 20th century.