Edison's vile and barbaric demonstrations were not to illustrate transmission loss, but to convince the public that his DC was safer than the other guy's ac so he could sell more Edison Power Generating Stations.
He would first give his victim a small jolt of DC to show that it did not actually injure the "test subject", then he would lay on a massive dose of ac to electrocute the animal in such a way as to provide the most horrific demonstration of death by electrocution he could create. Tesla was a sad genius. If he had just a little of Edison's interest in marketing he would have been wealthy enough to finance his all of his scientific investigations to his heart's content. Instead he squandered much of his time begging the wealthy for money and pursuing the impractical promise of transmitting electric power wirelessly while generally refusing refine his inventions for commercial use. DC has many disadvantages. DC motors must have brushes, which are maintenance intensive, a common point of failure, and a source of RF noise, or have an internal inverter (such as used in "computer" fans) to produce ac. DC cannot produce the rotating magnetic field used in virtually all industrial motors. While DC has it uses, ac rules worldwide because of its inherent advantages. BTW, although Tesla has been credited with making the first neon sign (for a business in New York) I read recently that the first neon sign in the US was made for a Los Angles Packard dealer (It was the Packard name logo) after he saw one while he was on holiday in France (Invention and Technology magazine, Winter 2009). Norm S/V Bandersnatch Lying Julington Creek 30 07.695N 081 38.484W ----- Original Message ----- From: ahmet erkan To: [email protected] Sent: 3/13/2009 7:04:00 AM Subject: Re: [Liveaboard] electricity Edison was at one extreme Tesla on the other. Edison believed in methods involving thousands of trial an error experiments and Tesla believed in analytical thinking and paper design. Similar to many individuals in typical upper management who do not have the time to understand the scientific principles, Edison believed in people who performed experiments in the lab and created something that "worked". Instead of the "vile and barbaric" demonstrations on safety had Edison been capable to quantify that AC power transmission at equivalent potential to DC transmission was lossier, he would have won. (By the way, my very clever and funny cat Mr. Zippy, thinks Edison totally sucked as far as humans go.) IMO if Edison was smart enough to present the facts and if he guided his army of engineers to develop efficient DC/DC conversion equipment we would have been ahead of where we are on HVDC power transmission and DC motors today. Oh well such is life. Ahmet
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