As I understand it, 110 volts was chosen because an arc light operates at
55 volts, and thus two of them in series would work well.
I believe Europe started out at 110/120, and moved up to 220/240 to reduce
the need for copper, esp. after WWII. When I lived in Europe in the
1960s, I traveled to places in France and Italy that had 110/120. And I
recall reading a posting from a German electrical worker describing what
they did to convert a village from 110 to 220.
And here's a writeup in voltages in Italy:
https://samuele963.github.io/electrics/history.html
Steve Gaarder
On Mon, 11 Mar 2024, (-Phil-) via EV wrote:
As far as I know, Edison decided on 110VDC (That's why people in the US
constantly refer to it as "110" when it's not been that way for over a
century), as that was high enough to make conductors reasonable, but not
terribly lethal, (so he claimed) light bulb filaments could bear it, and
switchgear could handle the arcs. When AC came along, to preserve the same
light bulbs, they matched Edison's DC. (RMS)
It started off as 110VAC, and slowly rose over the years until it was made
official in ANSI C81.1 in the early 1950's as 120VAC.
_______________________________________________
Address messages to ev@lists.evdl.org
No other addresses in TO and CC fields
HELP: http://www.evdl.org/help/
