Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Polette and
Speaker 1: I am an editor at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Sitting on the opposite side of this here table as
Speaker 1: usual as senior writer Jonathan Strickland. For those about to rock,
Speaker 1: we salute you. I know, I'm all amped up for
Speaker 1: this conversation. Yeah. Today we're going to talk about A
Speaker 1: C and d C electrical currents and what they mean,
Speaker 1: and why do we have them? And who are you?
Speaker 1: Oh now, the third one we're gonna skip now that
Speaker 1: who are you? As a different band entirely h C
Speaker 1: SID so anyway, he C d C. So we're talking
Speaker 1: about direct current that would be d C and alternating
Speaker 1: current that's a C. That's the two main forms of
Speaker 1: electricity that we're familiar with, and they have a pretty
Speaker 1: long history that includes one of the most famous rivalries
Speaker 1: in technology. And we've talked about it before and we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about it again. Yes, as uh as we speak,
Speaker 1: I currently have a picture of Nicola Tesla staring at
Speaker 1: the side of my head. He's on the wall here.
Speaker 1: He wants to make sure you get this right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we also have Edison somewhere in this room. Actually he's
Speaker 1: further back in the other part of the studio, but yes,
Speaker 1: Edison is also here. So Edison and Tesla are the
Speaker 1: two names of the the inventors who were kind of
Speaker 1: the the the face behind these two technologies. Edison, of
Speaker 1: course was a direct current guy, and Tesla was all
Speaker 1: about the alternating current. And they both are argued that
Speaker 1: their approach was the best. And it kind of makes
Speaker 1: sense that Edison did it because there was a lot
Speaker 1: of money at stake. Well, and and to some degree
Speaker 1: both of them were right and both of them were wrong,
Speaker 1: and sort of depends on the application. All depends on
Speaker 1: the application and the and the source of power that
Speaker 1: you're using. So, uh, should we talk about the actual power? Well,
Speaker 1: before we do that, I just wanted to make one other,
Speaker 1: one other mention. So those were the men, right, you
Speaker 1: had Edison and Tesla, those were the two men who
Speaker 1: were really at the forefront of this fight. Well there
Speaker 1: was one other, George Westinghouse. Yes, Well that's what I
Speaker 1: was going to say, is that behind these men were
Speaker 1: companies you had you had Westinghouse, who wasn't really a company,
Speaker 1: but you know west We now know of Westinghouse as
Speaker 1: a company. But we had Westinghouse on one side, in
Speaker 1: General Electric on the other. Yeah, and Westinghouse was backing Tesla,
Speaker 1: and General Electric of course was Edison's Companies is backing Edison. Um,
Speaker 1: so should we should we start with the the actual
Speaker 1: current and what it does and stuff like that, and
Speaker 1: then we can talk about the people. Let's talk about
Speaker 1: the current first because that's the easiest. So we know,
Speaker 1: we've talked about circuits, and we talked about batteries. That's
Speaker 1: an easy way to understand direct current. With direct current,
Speaker 1: you've got you have a negative poll and you have
Speaker 1: a positive poll on whatever or your power source is.
Speaker 1: So let's say it's a battery. You've got your your
Speaker 1: negative end and your positive end. The negative end that's
Speaker 1: where all the electrons are. Electrons have a negative charge,
Speaker 1: positive end. There is an absence of electrons. Now electrons,
Speaker 1: you know, like charges repel each other and opposite charges
Speaker 1: attract each other. Yes, so those electrons really want to
Speaker 1: get to that positive end because they do not like
Speaker 1: being all crammed up together. So when you put a
Speaker 1: power source into a circuit, that circuit is really a pathway.
Speaker 1: It's a pathway from the negative end to the positive end.
Speaker 1: And the electrons say, yippie, we can go to the
Speaker 1: positive end. And they just run as fast as they can,
Speaker 1: except they don't really run because electrons don't have legs.
Speaker 1: But they go as fast as they can through the pathway.
Speaker 1: And let's say that you decide, you know what, while
Speaker 1: these guys are running really fast, I'd like them to
Speaker 1: do a little work. I want them to light a
Speaker 1: light bulb. So I'm gonna put a light bulb right
Speaker 1: here in the middle of the pathway that they have
Speaker 1: to go through before they can get to the other side.
Speaker 1: The electrons say, don't care, just want to get to
Speaker 1: the positive end. We and they run through that pathway.
Speaker 1: They run through the lightbulb, they light up the light bulb,
Speaker 1: but they keep on going till they hit the positive end. Right.
Speaker 1: That's direct current. It's all moving in one direction. You know.
Speaker 1: They play that little song too before they and then
Speaker 1: they have to pay royalties to that guy who's suing
Speaker 1: the bugle. Yeah, you haven't heard about that. That's a
Speaker 1: different discussion. We'll we'll leave it off for it for
Speaker 1: this but anyway, so yeah, that's excuse me, that's direct current.
Speaker 1: It's it's a very simple way of delivering electricity. However, Uh,
Speaker 1: simple does not always mean good because simple also means
Speaker 1: that you are limited. And uh, and so now I
Speaker 1: guess we should talk about what alternating current is and
Speaker 1: then we can talk about why there was this rivalry
Speaker 1: between direct and alternating current. Yeah. Well, so Edison believed
Speaker 1: that direct current was the best application of electricity to
Speaker 1: bring power to people's homes, and so all his stuff
Speaker 1: use this technology. But Tesla saw a different way to
Speaker 1: do this, and he decided that alternating current would work better. Now,
Speaker 1: alternating current it's sort of weird because, uh to think
Speaker 1: about because and when you learn about basic circuits um
Speaker 1: in for example, shop class or something like that, where
Speaker 1: you're creating a simple circuits that you've got your battery
Speaker 1: and your light bulb at a switch and you hook
Speaker 1: everything up and you flip the switch and like is on.
Speaker 1: They unflipped the switch or flip it back the other
Speaker 1: way and the light goes off, Like okay, I got it.
Speaker 1: You know, exactly what Jonathan just said. It went from
Speaker 1: one end to the other. But alternating current goes change,
Speaker 1: it changes direction within the wires every every so often
Speaker 1: it goes let's just oversimplify, as we are apt or
Speaker 1: are prone to do on this show. Uh, left to
Speaker 1: right and then from right to left. So that's a
Speaker 1: little bit more difficult to explain. Yeah, it's using it's
Speaker 1: essentially using magnets. Really, it's using magnets too. If you
Speaker 1: were to think of it in the sense of the battery,
Speaker 1: it'd be swapping the the battery ends really really rapidly.
Speaker 1: But it's what it's doing. This through magnets, not through batteries.
Speaker 1: And uh. And by moving this back and forth, you
Speaker 1: are changing the flow of electricity through those wires several
Speaker 1: times a second. Um, I believe. Let's see, in the
Speaker 1: United States, I believe that's sixty times a second, and
Speaker 1: in Europe I think it's fifty. I believe that is correct,
Speaker 1: which is why why you have to have various adapters
Speaker 1: when you move between the United States and Europe. And
Speaker 1: you know sort of thing happens in other nations as well. Yes,
Speaker 1: I was correct, um, And we do have an article
Speaker 1: on the website about how electricity works that goes into
Speaker 1: alternating current and direct current. I do recommend you check
Speaker 1: that out because it'll have a lot some helpful information.
Speaker 1: We also have information on other elements will be talking
Speaker 1: about shortly, like transformers, but we'll get into that in
Speaker 1: a second. So, yeah, and the alternating current, the current
Speaker 1: reverses sixty times per second in the US or fifty
Speaker 1: times in a second in Europe. And that's what you
Speaker 1: get out of the wall socket. And you might say, well,
Speaker 1: why would you want to to have the alternating current
Speaker 1: moving back and forth like that? Well, on its on
Speaker 1: on the face of it, if you were just saying
Speaker 1: direct current versus alternating current, and you're just looking at
Speaker 1: the way that they are providing power to whatever load
Speaker 1: you've put on the pathway, like in my example it
Speaker 1: was that light bulb. If that's all you're looking at,
Speaker 1: there's no real huge advantage of direct current over alternating
Speaker 1: current or vice versa. They both are providing power to
Speaker 1: the load you're talking about it It only comes when
Speaker 1: it only gets down to when you are talking about
Speaker 1: generating power and delivering that power to another location. That's
Speaker 1: when you start looking at uh the advantages of alternating
Speaker 1: current over direct current, and that's the the that was
Speaker 1: the heart of the issue between Tesla and Edison. Edison
Speaker 1: had a lot of money invested in direct current, and
Speaker 1: he had a lot of patents uh that were directly
Speaker 1: involved with direct current, and he was drawing royalties from
Speaker 1: those patents. Because you had power stations that would be
Speaker 1: using direct current, they'd have to pay a fee to Edison.
Speaker 1: So it was within his financial interest to really promote
Speaker 1: direct current. And Edison was a master promoter. That was
Speaker 1: one of the things he was amazing at along with
Speaker 1: you know, he was a brilliant inventor as well, but
Speaker 1: he was also a great marketer. Tesla not as much,
Speaker 1: but Tesla felt that he was in the right. We
Speaker 1: get that argument a lot through the whole Tesla story. Yeah, Tesla.
Speaker 1: Tesla though, like to do demonstrations with electricity that showed
Speaker 1: him basically holding onto a source of electricity and there
Speaker 1: were sparks and things, and it it freaked a lot
Speaker 1: of people out. But Edison had had a particular demonstration. Well,
Speaker 1: we will have to talk about that really freaks people
Speaker 1: up to I'm hoping that we can keep that discussion
Speaker 1: to a minimum because that still turns my stomach. But anyway,
Speaker 1: so we should we should continue talking about the delivering power.
Speaker 1: So um yeah, the for edison to use the direct
Speaker 1: current doesn't doesn't really travel well, or didn't back in
Speaker 1: the day. They have found ways to to provide to
Speaker 1: help it travel long distances better now, But at the time,
Speaker 1: you had to have local power stations, very local power stations,
Speaker 1: like within a mile or two of wherever it was
Speaker 1: you were delivering power, and you could you had to
Speaker 1: deliver the same amount of power that your load was
Speaker 1: going to require. Um. In other words, you can't change
Speaker 1: the voltage easily on a direct current system. And the
Speaker 1: reason why that's important is let's say that you have
Speaker 1: a h you have you have a device, or you
Speaker 1: have you know, you have some sort of electronic load
Speaker 1: that's going to require oh um a certain number of
Speaker 1: volts will say a hundred volts, and that means that
Speaker 1: for a direct current uh generator, you would have to
Speaker 1: generate a hundred volts actually be around a hundred and
Speaker 1: ten because you do lose some electricity. There's a leakage
Speaker 1: issue with direct current that that that gets worse over distance.
Speaker 1: So you would have to um, you would have to
Speaker 1: actually have a generator that created the same voltage as
Speaker 1: what you were going to consume. And if you had
Speaker 1: a lot of different demands on this electricity, like you
Speaker 1: had a lot of different things that use different voltage,
Speaker 1: then you would have to have a different generator for
Speaker 1: each kind. And that's not very efficient either. And uh
Speaker 1: and because this these two problems, the fact that you
Speaker 1: could not send power over really long distances and you
Speaker 1: couldn't change the voltage easily, there were some disadvantages to this,
Speaker 1: and the biggest one is probably the distance thing, because
Speaker 1: it meant that you had to build generators all over
Speaker 1: the place if you wanted to distribute electricity over a region.
Speaker 1: And this got problematic, particularly when you go out to
Speaker 1: rural areas, because are you going to build a generator
Speaker 1: for every couple of houses that are miles and miles
Speaker 1: and miles Apart that that's not very cost effective for
Speaker 1: the people who live there, why would they even adopt
Speaker 1: electricity if that? If it meant essentially that they had
Speaker 1: to have their own generator right there, and and so
Speaker 1: alternating current got around this, and I guess I guess
Speaker 1: to really understand this you kind of have to talk about, uh,
Speaker 1: current versus voltage. So because voltage is is really and
Speaker 1: this is sort of weird to think about, it's a
Speaker 1: unit of electrical pressure rather than current, which is the
Speaker 1: number of electrons. Really, so you you measure we talked
Speaker 1: about current in terms of amps, and amps really refers
Speaker 1: to the number of electrons that are moving through that
Speaker 1: that circuit. Voltage, like you said, is more like pressure.
Speaker 1: It's the amount of power you've put behind those electrons.
Speaker 1: So if you had high voltage low low amps, then
Speaker 1: you would have relatively few electrons moving with a lot
Speaker 1: of power. If you had low voltage high amps, you
Speaker 1: have a lot of electrons moving at low power um
Speaker 1: And if high voltages travel further, it's because you know,
Speaker 1: you've put a huge amount of energy into this this current,
Speaker 1: and it's going to push the electrons further than it
Speaker 1: would with less leakage than it would if you had
Speaker 1: a low voltage. See now I'm thinking of a different
Speaker 1: song by the same band you quoted initially. Voltage. So
Speaker 1: in other words, in other words, let's say that you've
Speaker 1: got imagine you have a pipe in front of you
Speaker 1: and it's a you've got a bowling ball that will
Speaker 1: fit inside this pipe. So that's a pretty big diameter, right,
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. It doesn't matter the reason why I'm saying.
Speaker 1: Let's say that let's say that you get a little
Speaker 1: kid to give that bowling ball a push. Well, that
Speaker 1: bowling ball is only gonna go so far. And then
Speaker 1: let's say you get a guy in the World's Strongest
Speaker 1: Man competition to get come along and give it a
Speaker 1: push as hard as he can. That ball is gonna
Speaker 1: go much further. Well with direct current because the generator
Speaker 1: had to be the same voltage as whatever the this
Speaker 1: that the actual receiving um appliance or or load was
Speaker 1: going to be. You couldn't crease that voltage to make
Speaker 1: the current go further because if you did, then your
Speaker 1: loads wouldn't work anymore. They be overloaded because you know,
Speaker 1: the voltage would be way too high. But alternating current,
Speaker 1: because those electrons change direction, they create something else that
Speaker 1: allows you to boost and then reduce the voltage along
Speaker 1: power lines. So the power that comes out of a
Speaker 1: power generator, uh, the electricity that comes out of a
Speaker 1: generator plant doesn't necessarily have to be the same voltage
Speaker 1: as what's actually traveling through the power lines on the
Speaker 1: power grid. Now you need something to step up the voltage,
Speaker 1: which is the transformer. And they are indeed more than
Speaker 1: meets the eye, but they are not robots that change
Speaker 1: into other forms. A transformer, UH is a way to
Speaker 1: change from one voltage to another, and it's actually at
Speaker 1: its heart, a transformer is incredibly simple and it all
Speaker 1: has to do with the relationship between electricity and magnetism,
Speaker 1: which we have talked about many, many times on this podcast,
Speaker 1: but in general, if you've forgotten, if you if you
Speaker 1: have if you're just tuting it. Yeah, if you have
Speaker 1: current moving through a wire and you and that will
Speaker 1: generate a magnetic field, particularly if you're alternating that current,
Speaker 1: it creates a an alternating magnetic field. All right, So
Speaker 1: the currents reversing back and forth through this line that's
Speaker 1: creating this this uh magnetic field that itself is changing
Speaker 1: over and over again. So let's say you've got a
Speaker 1: coil of wire next to an alternating magnetic field, of
Speaker 1: magnetic field that's influx, it's changing over and over again. Well,
Speaker 1: if the magnetic field is changing and the coil of
Speaker 1: wire is close enough, that's going to induce electrons to
Speaker 1: flow through the wire. All right, So using this we
Speaker 1: can make alternating current and create a and create a transformer.
Speaker 1: You have one coil of wire, that's your primary coil.
Speaker 1: You're running electricity through this coil and it's an alternating current,
Speaker 1: so it's going back and forth, reversing direction through through
Speaker 1: this coil. You put a secondary coil near the primary coil.
Speaker 1: The magnetic field generated by the primary coil will induce
Speaker 1: electricity in the secondary coil. And here's the really cool thing.
Speaker 1: The number of coils in the primary coil versus the
Speaker 1: number of coils in the secondary coil will determine how
Speaker 1: the voltage changes. So it's very simple. Yeah, let's say
Speaker 1: that you have one coil in your primary coil, so
Speaker 1: you just do one turn and that's it, and you
Speaker 1: have ten coils in your secondary coil. The amount of
Speaker 1: voltage in the secondary coil that's generated from that magnetic
Speaker 1: magnetic flux will be ten times as strong as the
Speaker 1: primary coil, so you have stepped up the voltage. So
Speaker 1: what you do is at your power generation plant, you
Speaker 1: have a primary coil that is a certain number of coils,
Speaker 1: and your secondary coil has way more coils, and the
Speaker 1: ratio there will determine how much the voltage changes. You
Speaker 1: then transmit that electricity through wires to wherever, you know,
Speaker 1: through to a residential neighborhood, let's say, Well, as the
Speaker 1: the electricity travels there, once it hits the the the
Speaker 1: the power lines, the power poles that have the connection
Speaker 1: to your house, there's a transformer on those those uh,
Speaker 1: essentially their telephone poles. That's what we think of them as, right,
Speaker 1: they have they have transformers too. Now in that case,
Speaker 1: they their primary coils have more coils than the secondary coils,
Speaker 1: so the voltage is stepped down. And that means that
Speaker 1: even though the voltage in the power line that's coming
Speaker 1: down the street is really really high, way higher than
Speaker 1: what you need in your house, in fact, so high
Speaker 1: that it's you know, incredibly deadly. Um, once it goes
Speaker 1: through that transformer and goes to your house, it's going
Speaker 1: to be at the right voltage for your home. Yes,
Speaker 1: and we usually in the United States that would be
Speaker 1: a hundred and twenty volts. Because remember we talked about
Speaker 1: it reversing sixty times a second, Well, you have to
Speaker 1: add the two sixties, right, the sixty positives and the
Speaker 1: sixty negatives for lack of a better term, add those
Speaker 1: together and it's not like sixty plus negative sixty at
Speaker 1: sixty plus sixty hundred twenty volts. And that solves the
Speaker 1: problem that you were talking about earlier with the need
Speaker 1: for the generating Russian to be to match exactly the
Speaker 1: the the load at the other end, right, And it
Speaker 1: it solves the problem of the distance issue too, because
Speaker 1: you've you have upped the voltage so high that it's
Speaker 1: going to transmit over a much greater distance than direct
Speaker 1: current will and so um, you've just solved that issue
Speaker 1: of how do you deliver electricity in an efficient way
Speaker 1: so you don't have to build generators every couple of
Speaker 1: miles and uh, Tesla and Westinghouse I thought this was
Speaker 1: a brilliant idea. Edison of course, did not like it
Speaker 1: because it did not it was it was it was
Speaker 1: a competing standard to his own, and it was going
Speaker 1: to mean that he was going to be out some
Speaker 1: serious dough. So there there became a kind of a
Speaker 1: series of one upmanship demonstrations across well mostly the northeast,
Speaker 1: but uh, it was an attempt to to make to
Speaker 1: to try and have one standard come out the supreme
Speaker 1: leader in electricity. Yeah. We uh, we've talked about these things,
Speaker 1: not in then and then not terribly distant past. At
Speaker 1: this point when we're recording is um and I believe
Speaker 1: I revealed at one point that I had read the
Speaker 1: book Empires of Light by Jill Jonas Um and I'm
Speaker 1: probably still mispronouncing her last name, UM, which is about
Speaker 1: this about the current wars, and uh, it paints a
Speaker 1: really unflattering picture of Edison really when you learn a
Speaker 1: lot more about it. Um. Now, Tesla was sort of
Speaker 1: a eccentric. He was an eccentric. He also kind of
Speaker 1: liked to live the high life. Uh. He liked expensive
Speaker 1: stuff and eccentric dandy who got progressively crazier as he
Speaker 1: got older. I wouldn't say crazy, No, I would still
Speaker 1: be alive in some capacity. Um. Now I'm a crazy one.
Speaker 1: So yes, my co host is joining Tesla. No there,
Speaker 1: it's it's fun to just, you know, make those jokes. Uh. No,
Speaker 1: he uh, he wasn't really in the business of He
Speaker 1: he liked to invent stuff and he actually at one
Speaker 1: point worked for Edison. Um. They didn't always see eye
Speaker 1: to eye. Before all this happened. Um and uh, I
Speaker 1: think Tesla sort of felt like, based on what I've read,
Speaker 1: Tesla sort of felt like he was underappreciated and wanted
Speaker 1: to strike out on his own. And this was one
Speaker 1: of the things, one of the many, many things. Of course,
Speaker 1: we talked about radio and how he worked on that.
Speaker 1: He's um, he got involved with a lot of different
Speaker 1: kinds of things. And I've also read that that in general,
Speaker 1: and this may be an over generalization, but in general
Speaker 1: that Edison took a very experimental approach to learning things,
Speaker 1: Like he he was all about doing something and if
Speaker 1: that worked, then that's great, solve that problem. Whereas Tesla
Speaker 1: was more about understanding and thinking things through and then
Speaker 1: designing stuff that builds on that knowledge. So you know,
Speaker 1: it's two different approaches. And I've even seen it referred
Speaker 1: to as Essen's approach being more of a brute force approach,
Speaker 1: like you know, you try something and if it doesn't work, well,
Speaker 1: that's too bad. You go on and you do something else,
Speaker 1: and whereas Tesla was more of an architect, someone who
Speaker 1: would think things through before actually committing to action. Although
Speaker 1: one would argue based upon some of Tesla's later works
Speaker 1: that that was not always true. So we're talking about
Speaker 1: the one upsmanship, the battles between these two well Edison
Speaker 1: Edison was really UM did a lot of his own
Speaker 1: promotion UM and Tesla UH did a lot of his
Speaker 1: own personal promotion. UM. So they were really kind of
Speaker 1: different people. I mean Thatison was really working on his
Speaker 1: company and building that up UM and Tesla licensed his
Speaker 1: patents to UH George Westinghouses company. Westinghouse. He would also
Speaker 1: be sort of an interesting person to talk about with
Speaker 1: on his own show, if we ever get around to that.
Speaker 1: But he invented a railroad break that was very very popular.
Speaker 1: He made a lot of money doing this, and he
Speaker 1: saw a way too. He started getting into the electric
Speaker 1: game two. He saw himself as a somebody who could
Speaker 1: actually take on Edison and some of the others who
Speaker 1: were involved in this. They weren't the only two um
Speaker 1: because this was you know, it's like a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff like UH computers and so many other things, the internet,
Speaker 1: uh phones. You know, at that point when when Edison
Speaker 1: and Tesla were really doing this, they were all there
Speaker 1: were many many inventors working on solutions to these problems.
Speaker 1: How were you going to wire up homes, building the
Speaker 1: infrastructure and that kind of stuff. So Westinghouse licensed Tesla's
Speaker 1: patents and began building equipment. Um, and they've been They
Speaker 1: began competing for different projects, such as the Colombian Next
Speaker 1: Exhibition in Chicago, which was the World's Fair, and who
Speaker 1: was going to light the World's Fear because they really
Speaker 1: wanted to do this thing right. They wanted light bulbs
Speaker 1: everywhere because really, I mean there were very few people
Speaker 1: who had their homes wired for light. Um, this was
Speaker 1: gonna be really cool, and they were. When they succeeded
Speaker 1: in doing so. Um, that was a huge, huge thing
Speaker 1: because people wanted to see it at night when everything
Speaker 1: was lit up with electric power. Yeah, that was in
Speaker 1: So while they are arguing over who gets to light
Speaker 1: up the World's Fair, Dr H. H. Holmes is creating
Speaker 1: his his Reign of Terror as America one of America's
Speaker 1: first serial killers. Yeah, just like i'd throw that out there. Stuff.
Speaker 1: You should know did a show about him? Really? Yeah.
Speaker 1: There's actually a fantastic book called The Devil in the
Speaker 1: White City that is the story both about H. H.
Speaker 1: Holmes and his activities and the the preparation and execution
Speaker 1: of the World's Fair. And frankly, the World's Fair sections
Speaker 1: in that book were to me ten times more interesting
Speaker 1: than the story about the one of America's first serial killers.
Speaker 1: And it's kind of but it was. It's because you
Speaker 1: have these incredible personalities that were all mixing to make
Speaker 1: the World's Fair, and Tesla and Edison were two of them,
Speaker 1: and ultimately Tesla one and that was a bitter fight. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and UH and Edison. You know, he was not above
Speaker 1: some pretty outrageous displays to try and win people over
Speaker 1: to his side. One of his arguments was that because
Speaker 1: alternating current had these transformers, and because alternating current would
Speaker 1: UH would transform a low voltage into an incredibly high
Speaker 1: voltage flow of electricity, he argued that all turning current
Speaker 1: was was inherently dangerous and direct current was safe or
Speaker 1: considerably safer. Exactly so he would demonstrate this, and this
Speaker 1: is absolutely horrifying to anyone who's an animal lover, by
Speaker 1: holding UH a public hearing and then using alternating current
Speaker 1: to electrocute as in, to kill animals with electricity. UH.
Speaker 1: The the probably the most famous example of which was
Speaker 1: an elephant named Topsy. Yeah, Harold Brown sort of a
Speaker 1: bit player in this whole drama. Um was a guy
Speaker 1: that from what I can tell, uh and Empires of
Speaker 1: Light sort of came out of nowhere. He wasn't really
Speaker 1: an employee of of the Edison company, but um. He
Speaker 1: was also of the belief that alternating current was extremely dangerous.
Speaker 1: And Edison saw a way to promote the idea that
Speaker 1: a senating current was dangerous and direct current was safer,
Speaker 1: um by using Brown's experiments. And he you know, basically
Speaker 1: experimented on on animals and showing that, uh, the amount
Speaker 1: of current of alternating current would take to kill somebody
Speaker 1: was considerably less than the amount of direct current it
Speaker 1: would take to kill somebody. Um. And they did experiments
Speaker 1: on animals both and and if I'm not mistaken, in
Speaker 1: private and in public the public demonstrations, you know, they
Speaker 1: they electrocuted dogs and other animals, including Topsy the elephant.
Speaker 1: And then they decided to uh promote a new way
Speaker 1: of uh dispensing justice. They built the electric chair. Look
Speaker 1: how dangerous alternating current is. They can use it to
Speaker 1: put criminals to death. And they promoted this as a
Speaker 1: way to you know, for one thing, they were uh
Speaker 1: theoretically providing a public service, right, you know, it's a
Speaker 1: new way to to execute convicted criminals. But also it
Speaker 1: promoted their ends by saying, look, how dangerous alternating current is,
Speaker 1: so we should all invest in direct current. Ultimately, that
Speaker 1: argument did not win, and so alternating current because it
Speaker 1: just made more sense financially as far as a way
Speaker 1: of distributing electricity across wide areas. Uh, that's what went out,
Speaker 1: I mean, and it makes sense in that use case. Right,
Speaker 1: It's not like direct current went away. It's not like
Speaker 1: we don't use direct current. And lots of different things
Speaker 1: right now. Yep. And in fact, um, depending on the device,
Speaker 1: you may be using both. You know, they're um, some
Speaker 1: of the adapters that you plug in for portable electronics
Speaker 1: have a DC output even though they're taking their you know, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: you're you're taking alternating current from the wall and then
Speaker 1: the converter converts it from alternating current to direct current
Speaker 1: before it delivers the elector to whatever device you're using. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: there there are plenty of examples of that. And of
Speaker 1: course if you have anything with a battery in it,
Speaker 1: well that's you know, a battery, Like we said, in
Speaker 1: the very first example, that's direct current unless you are
Speaker 1: having some weird way of swapping the batteries poles over
Speaker 1: and over again, which I can't imagine you're doing that.
Speaker 1: Um then quick, yeah, yeah, that's a direct current. So
Speaker 1: so we still use both. And there are a lot
Speaker 1: of reasons why you would want to use direct current
Speaker 1: for especially for anything that's like, you know, not connected
Speaker 1: to a power source, or not a power source but
Speaker 1: a power plant. Um So there's we still use direct
Speaker 1: current and plenty of applications. But when it comes to
Speaker 1: delivering electricity across huge distances, alternating currents the way to go.
Speaker 1: It makes perfect sense. By the way, have you ever
Speaker 1: seen a transformer blow? No, but I've heard them. I've
Speaker 1: seen it a few times. It is a pretty spectacular
Speaker 1: and incredibly startling thing to see. Yeah. Yeah, every once
Speaker 1: in a while you will hear one, uh you know,
Speaker 1: blowout in your neighborhood or actually there was one here
Speaker 1: in the Atlanta area just yesterday that started a brush
Speaker 1: fire when it when it exploded. Yeah, you usually see
Speaker 1: a lot of sparks, and there's normally a very loud bang. Actually,
Speaker 1: there's always gonna be off really loud bang and it's Um.
Speaker 1: I remember the first time it happened. I thought someone
Speaker 1: fired a shotgun off next to the car I was in,
Speaker 1: because it was we were going down downtown Atlanta in
Speaker 1: a thunderstorm and a power surge caused the transformer to
Speaker 1: overlow and overload rather and it uh and it blew
Speaker 1: out the transformer. Uh. Yeah. And and transformers are a
Speaker 1: little more complicated than just two coils of wire. That's
Speaker 1: just the basic that's the that's the core of a transformer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we wanted you to understand the concept. You can. There's
Speaker 1: there's plenty of reading to be done, believe me, on
Speaker 1: on these things. Yeah. Check out our articles on electricity
Speaker 1: and transformers. Uh. They are They are very helpful. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of really cool illustrations, and I think
Speaker 1: you'll find it interesting. Um. It definitely helped me understand
Speaker 1: a little better about the subject before we came in
Speaker 1: here today. Yeah. Yeah. And and although we were joking
Speaker 1: about the the toy slash movie transformers, we have articles
Speaker 1: about that too. So if you are highly entertaining, if
Speaker 1: you want to read her about optimist prime, we've got
Speaker 1: you covered. And real transformers or sort of actually, I
Speaker 1: think the one that's about the robots is called what
Speaker 1: are Real Transformers? Yeah? Exactly, Uh so, well, so yeah,
Speaker 1: check them out. Check them out. It's good stuff. And uh,
Speaker 1: let's know, if you guys want us to talk about
Speaker 1: any particular subjects, We've been getting a lot of really
Speaker 1: good suggestions from Facebook, from Twitter, from email. Keep them
Speaker 1: coming because it makes our jobs much easier when we
Speaker 1: know what our listeners want to hear. And you know,
Speaker 1: we try not to concentrate on any one particular type
Speaker 1: of subject for too long other than technology. We seem
Speaker 1: to be stuck on that for some reason, So let
Speaker 1: us know. You can let us know on Facebook or
Speaker 1: Twitter are hand Gold. There is text stuff h s
Speaker 1: W or you can send us an email on that
Speaker 1: addresses tech stuff at how stuff Works dot com and
Speaker 1: Chris and I will talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff
Speaker 1: from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we
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