Electrocuting horses


[Follow Ups] [Post Followup] [Dodge Power Wagon Forum]


Posted by David Sherman on Sunday, February 08, 2009 at 13:12:22 :

In Reply to: Re: The plate on it says... posted by Doc Dave on Sunday, February 08, 2009 at 11:58:15 :

If people did that, they were no doubt inspired by Thomas Edison's public demonstrations. Edison's General Electric company had cornered the market for everything electrical, including electric power generators and distribution equipment. When a practical AC system was invented by Nikola Tesla and licensed to Westinghouse the "battle of the currents" began. Westinghouse had all the technical advantages -- no maintenance-intensive commutators on the motors and generators, brushless induction motors, and most of all the ability to use transformers to change the voltage up and down with no moving parts as needed for transmitting power long distances.

GE's response was a scare campaign to convince the public that AC was dangerous. They not only pushed for the adoption of "electrocution" (a word they coined) using AC (of course) to execute condemned prisoners, but they put on a public demonstration in Madison Square Garden in which the "electrocuted" various animals with alternating current. They even electrocuted an elephant and made a movie of it, which you can still watch, if you have the stomach for that sort of thing. Perhaps some of this was in response to Tesla's showmanship, in which he'd pass AC current through his own body and use it to light up a light bulb (the frequency was far higher than 60 Hz, but he didn't need to tell people that), would light bulbs with no wires connected to them, and would make ball lighting and throw it across the room. By comparison, electrocuting animals was rather crude. The anti-AC smear campaign did work for a while, but before long the technical advantages of AC were unavoidable and we now run almost everything on Tesla's machines rather than Edison's.

Tesla's original licensing agreement with Westinghouse was to pay him a royalty of a couple cents per killowatt-hour generated via his machines, but when the AC system caught on, Westinghouse realized that if he paid Tesla the royalty, Tesla would soon be richer than Westinghouse. Since Tesla was essentially broke at the time, Westinghouse basically said, "so sue me", and never paid the royalty.

In reality, at 60 Hz, AC and DC are equally dangerous, the danger depending on the voltage, and not the frequency. At higher frequencies, strange effects happen that will make the electricity burn you where you touch it, even though you don't get a shock, but 60 Hz is close enough to DC that there's no physiological difference.

Now you know the rest of the story.



Follow Ups:



Post a Followup

Name:
E-Mail:
Subject:
Message:
Optional Link
URL:
Title:
Optional Image Link
URL:


This board is powered by the Mr. Fong Device from Cyberarmy.com