Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology made history yesterday by successfully harnessing electricity from George Orwell spinning in his grave.

In a watershed moment for turbine technology, the late author’s cosmic fury generated 7,400 kilowatts in just two hours, enough energy to power the average home for an entire year.

The crack team of MIT scientists had been working in the village of Sutton Courtenay, where Orwell is buried, for three years prior to yesterday’s breakthrough.

Project head Dr Edgar Brown told assembled press: “It’s an incredible achievement, and we hope this is just the beginning. There’s an incredible amount of untapped energy here.”

George Orwell, author of Animal Farm and 1984, was chosen as the initiative’s test subject following an eight month screening process which considered hundreds of deceased authors, activists, and intellectuals.

MIT is understood to be in talks with the estates of Martin Luther King, Jr., Aldous Huxley, and Clement Attlee, with plans to exhume the bodies and move them to a specialist plant in Arizona.

Noam Chomsky has also agreed to donate his body to the programme when his time comes.