How did electric furnaces change the production of elemental phosphorus?

In the late 1800s, James Burgess Readman of Edinburgh developed an electric furnace method for producing elemental phosphorus directly from phosphate rock.1

Prior to this innovation, the production of elemental phosphorus was a more laborious process. Historically, phosphorus was obtained by digesting bones with nitric or sulfuric acid to form phosphoric acid, which was then distilled by heating with charcoal. The introduction of the electric furnace method revolutionized this by allowing for the direct extraction of the element from phosphate rock, a technique that remains the standard method employed today.1