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Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how

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Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.

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Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm a senior writer with

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Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com, and of course this is

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Speaker 1: the podcast where we talk about all things technological and

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Speaker 1: technical in nature and how they affect us and how

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Speaker 1: they've changed over time and kind of give you some

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Speaker 1: context and understanding of this technology stuff. And today we're

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Speaker 1: going to continue our series about the history of electricity.

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Speaker 1: We're going to conclude it today, although we're concluding it

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Speaker 1: right when electric power grids were starting to become a

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Speaker 1: real thing. But since that point, a lot of the

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Speaker 1: changes are more in electricity generation and less in electricity transmission.

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Speaker 1: And I really wanted to get to the point where

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Speaker 1: we talked about transmitting electricity. Maybe in a future episode

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Speaker 1: I will continue this and revisit the topic and give

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Speaker 1: more context from the early power grids up to modern day,

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Speaker 1: and also talk about some of the other various projects

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Speaker 1: that haven't really materialized, stuff like test Lea's suggestion of

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Speaker 1: broadcasting power over the air as opposed to over transmission lines,

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Speaker 1: and what would that take and would it be a

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Speaker 1: good idea, but that's for another episode. In our last episode,

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Speaker 1: we explored how scientists, philosophers, inventors, and crazy people began

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Speaker 1: to suss out the basics of electricity, largely through a

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Speaker 1: lot of experimentation and a few happy accidents. Now, the

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Speaker 1: story is one of those that really reinforces the fact

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Speaker 1: that discoveries are rarely attributable to a single person. We

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Speaker 1: like those stories. We like to say this one person

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Speaker 1: was responsible for X, and this other person was responsible

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Speaker 1: for why. But the truth is way more complicated than that.

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Speaker 1: Usually people are building upon the work of others that

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Speaker 1: came before them, and they might be refining things and

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Speaker 1: innovating in that space. But if it weren't for those

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Speaker 1: who were earlier working on the same sort of stuff,

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Speaker 1: you might not have ever seen those those innovations happen. So,

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Speaker 1: you know, we talk about stuff like Edison invent the lightbulb,

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Speaker 1: or Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, but we really

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Speaker 1: would have to acknowledge some of the other people whose

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Speaker 1: work made all of that possible. First of all, Edison

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Speaker 1: didn't invent the light bulb, but he did improve it greatly. Um,

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Speaker 1: but we would need to talk about all that stuff.

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Speaker 1: And this is not to take away from those inventors

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Speaker 1: and engineers who really did make incredible contributions to technology

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Speaker 1: and too our way of life. They are remarkable human

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Speaker 1: beings and so I don't want to take anything away

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Speaker 1: from them. But at the same time, I don't want

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Speaker 1: to ignore those who also made other contributions that made

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Speaker 1: all of this possible. It's a disservice to them to

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Speaker 1: gloss over it. So it would be also very difficult

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Speaker 1: to make an hour long podcast if in fact most

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Speaker 1: inventions were due to a single person's moment of ingenuity, right,

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Speaker 1: if the story were as simple as thomass and invented

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Speaker 1: the lightbulb. I don't know that I can make an

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Speaker 1: hour out of that, probably about forty minutes, but I

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Speaker 1: don't know if I could stretch it to a full hour. Now.

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Speaker 1: By the end of the last episode, I talked about

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Speaker 1: an early alternating current generator and how by using what

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Speaker 1: was called a split ring commutator, early inventors could change

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Speaker 1: that alternating current that was being created in the generator

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Speaker 1: into direct current. Not just so you remember alternating current,

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Speaker 1: the direction of current reverses multiple times per second. Their cycles,

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Speaker 1: and we describe them in freak and sees. So, for example,

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Speaker 1: here in the United States, we have a sixty hurts

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Speaker 1: frequency for our electricity, for our alternating current. That means

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Speaker 1: sixty times per second that direction of current changes. So

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Speaker 1: if you're looking at a wire stretching from left to right,

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Speaker 1: that means that current would be flowing left or right

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Speaker 1: and then right to left, and it would keep changing

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Speaker 1: sixty times every second, whereas in Europe it would be

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Speaker 1: fifty times. They're on a fifty hurts system sixty hurt system.

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Speaker 1: More on that in a little bit. Direct current, however,

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Speaker 1: goes in a single direction. It does not change. So

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Speaker 1: it goes from left to right or right to left,

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Speaker 1: but it doesn't change throughout the It doesn't have cycles.

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Speaker 1: It just continues until you shut the power off, in

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Speaker 1: which case current ceases to flow. Now, I want to

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Speaker 1: continue the timeline we talked about UH in that last episode,

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Speaker 1: talk more about how electricity moved out of the laboratory

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Speaker 1: and into the real world. But in order to do that,

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Speaker 1: I also have to backtrack just a bit from the

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Speaker 1: end of the last episode where I was talking about generators,

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Speaker 1: because as there are some people who were working in

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Speaker 1: electricity that I didn't really mentioned too much in the

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Speaker 1: last episode, and I kind of need to in order

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Speaker 1: to understand more about building upon those ideas. So one

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Speaker 1: of those people was Humphrey Davy. I mentioned him briefly

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Speaker 1: in the last episode. He was one of the first

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Speaker 1: people to make a practical use of electricity outside of

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Speaker 1: direct experimentation. So remember in the early eighteenth century, well

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Speaker 1: not early the late eighteenth century, early nineteenth century, you

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Speaker 1: had inventors and engineers who were experimenting with electricity, but

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Speaker 1: they didn't really have any practical use for it. Humphrey

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Speaker 1: Davy was the first person to create something that could

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Speaker 1: be practically used with electricity. He created the first arc

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Speaker 1: lamp and the first incandescent lamp way back in the

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Speaker 1: first decade of the eighteen hundreds. Uh the Davy lamp

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Speaker 1: became a famous invention. Now, neither of those were meant

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Speaker 1: for commercial use or manufacturing. They weren't made to light

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Speaker 1: people's homes. It was more of a use case to

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Speaker 1: prove that electricity could have some practical application beyond just

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Speaker 1: understanding a fundamental element of the universe or fundamental element

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Speaker 1: of of life on Earth. At least so uh it

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Speaker 1: would be many more decades before anyone could make a

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Speaker 1: commercially viable lightbulb or lamp, but Davy's work showed that

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Speaker 1: it was in fact possible. Also in that last episode,

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Speaker 1: I mentioned Ampierre, whose last name is used as a

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Speaker 1: unit of measurement within the electrical engineering world. Anyway, I

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Speaker 1: mentioned that Empire was studying the nature of electricity and magnets,

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Speaker 1: but he was building on the work of others. One

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Speaker 1: of those others was Hans Christian Airstead, who was a

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Speaker 1: Danish philosopher and scientist and discovered something that I mentioned

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Speaker 1: in the previous episode, What what which was electro magnetism.

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Speaker 1: Airstead heard of Alessandro Volta's experiments with batteries, so Volta

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Speaker 1: made the voltaic pile, the predecessor to the modern battery,

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Speaker 1: and air Stead had heard about it, and by eight

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Speaker 1: o one Airstead started doing his own experiments, making his

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Speaker 1: own batteries, and air Stead proposed that there might be

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Speaker 1: a way of measuring the amount of current passing through

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Speaker 1: a wire by putting the wire into water and allowing

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Speaker 1: the electricity to separate the molecular bonds of hydrogen and

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Speaker 1: oxygen in order otherwise to create electrolysis. Uh. And that

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Speaker 1: if you measured the amount of gas given off by

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Speaker 1: the water, then you could use that to infer how

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Speaker 1: much current was passing through the wire. It was kind

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Speaker 1: of an indirect way of establishing how much current was

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Speaker 1: passing through the wire at any given moment. Now in air,

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Speaker 1: Stead performed an experiment in which he passed an electric

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Speaker 1: current through a wire and then brought the wire near

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Speaker 1: a magnetized compass needle, and this caused the compass needle

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Speaker 1: to swing out of alignment. It was no longer lined

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Speaker 1: up with the Earth's magnetic polls. And you know this

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Speaker 1: will happen when you bring a magnet close to a compass.

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Speaker 1: The Earth's magnetic field is powerful, but if you bring

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Speaker 1: a small, less powerful magnet in close proximity to the

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Speaker 1: compass needle, you will overpower the Earth's magnetic field. The

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Speaker 1: compass needle will move towards the magnet um because again,

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Speaker 1: the strength of a magnetic field is somewhat dependent upon

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Speaker 1: its distance to a magnetic material. Well, he said, the

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Speaker 1: shows that an electric current passing through a wire creates

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Speaker 1: its own magnetic field. It's obviously affecting these compass needles.

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Speaker 1: So he continue to experiment to better understand the nature

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Speaker 1: of electricity and magnetism, and he came to realize that

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Speaker 1: an electric current creates a circular magnetic field around it.

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Speaker 1: So if you're looking at a straight copper wire and

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Speaker 1: you turn it so that you're looking at it from

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Speaker 1: the end on, so you're looking down the length of

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Speaker 1: an electric copper wire, and you're able to run current

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Speaker 1: through that copper wire, and if you were able to

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Speaker 1: visualize the magnetic field, you would see the magnetic field

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Speaker 1: appear as a circle, and the copper wire would essentially

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Speaker 1: be the center of the circle, or at least circulure.

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Speaker 1: It wouldn't be necessarily a perfect circle, but it would

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Speaker 1: be a circular field around the core, which would be

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Speaker 1: the the wire itself. Also, although this was not understood

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Speaker 1: by Rstad at the time, if you ran an alternating

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Speaker 1: current through that that wire, you would see the direction

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Speaker 1: of that magnetic field reverse. So when the current flows

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Speaker 1: in one direction, you would see it flowing in a

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Speaker 1: clockwise direction, and if you reverse the current, you would

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Speaker 1: see it flow in a counterclockwise direction. This would become

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Speaker 1: really important later on when we talk about alternating currents

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Speaker 1: and transformers, transformers being the type of of gadget that

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Speaker 1: you use to step up or step down electric voltage,

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Speaker 1: not robots that are more than meets the eye. That's

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Speaker 1: a different type of transformer. So air Stond makes this

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Speaker 1: observation about copper wire with a current flowing through it

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Speaker 1: becoming a magnetic uh force for emitting a magnetic force,

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Speaker 1: and Empire made a similar discovery with electric wires attracting

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Speaker 1: one another whenever electricity would flow through them. So this

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Speaker 1: was the earliest observations of electro magnetism that are recorded.

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Speaker 1: In four William Sturgeon experimented with electromagnetism by rap wrapping

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Speaker 1: a bear wire of copper around an iron core. So

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Speaker 1: imagine you've got like a just an iron nail, and

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Speaker 1: you've got some bear copper wire, and you bend the

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Speaker 1: copper wire so it coils around this iron core several times.

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Speaker 1: He found that if he passed a current through the wire,

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Speaker 1: it would turn the whole thing into a agnet briefly,

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Speaker 1: but then the effect wouldn't disappear. So why was the

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Speaker 1: effect disappearing, Well, the current was moving from the copper

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Speaker 1: wire into the iron core of the structure. It wasn't

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Speaker 1: maintaining a current through entirely. It was it was shorting

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Speaker 1: out essentially. And uh William Sturgeon also couldn't do a

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Speaker 1: multi layer wrap of the wire because the copper wire

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Speaker 1: is conductive. If it made contact with itself, then current

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Speaker 1: is flowing in the most efficient pathway. It's not going

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Speaker 1: down the length of the copper wire necessarily, it could

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Speaker 1: pass through as coils touched each other. So uh, he

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Speaker 1: wasn't able to make a very strong magnetic effect. This

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Speaker 1: way you you create you increase the magnetic effect by

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Speaker 1: making more coils. So if you're able to coil a

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Speaker 1: conductive wire more times around a core, like in this case,

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Speaker 1: an iron core, you create a more powerful magnetic field

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Speaker 1: as you passed the current through that conductor. In eight

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Speaker 1: twenty seven, a man named Joseph Henry found a solution

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Speaker 1: to this problem. He wrapped his copper wires in silk,

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Speaker 1: which insulated them, so now he could have the copper

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Speaker 1: wires laying against an iron core and laying against itself

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Speaker 1: without the current bleeding through because the wires were insulated,

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Speaker 1: and that allowed him to wrap the wires around the

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Speaker 1: iron core several more times than Sturgeon was able to,

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Speaker 1: and that meant the charge could not disappear into the

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Speaker 1: iron and the electromagnetic effect would remain as long as

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Speaker 1: a current was passing through the wire. So this discovering

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Speaker 1: electromagnetism would become incredibly important for future applications of electricity. Meanwhile,

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Speaker 1: Michael Faraday had been working with moving copper near a

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Speaker 1: stationary magnet, which would induce current to flow through the copper.

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Speaker 1: This is the basis of generators. Whether you are moving

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Speaker 1: a conductor through the magnetic fields of some stationary magnets,

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Speaker 1: or you're moving the magnets around a conductor so that

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Speaker 1: the magnetic field is fluctuating around the conductor. Whenever you

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Speaker 1: introduce a conductor through a fluctuating magnetic field, you're going

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Speaker 1: to induce current to flow through that metal conductor or

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Speaker 1: really I should just say conductor doesn't. That's the important part,

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Speaker 1: not whether or not it's metal. Also important is that

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Speaker 1: it has to be that fluctuating magnetic field, otherwise you

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Speaker 1: will induce current to flow. But as soon as the

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Speaker 1: magnetic field stops to fluctuate, current will no longer flow.

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Speaker 1: So you would typically do this by putting two permanent

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Speaker 1: magnets end to end with the north pole facing the

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Speaker 1: south pole of another one, and in between them, you

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Speaker 1: would have your conductor on a rotatable system. So imagine

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Speaker 1: that you've got a square of copper wire. You formed

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Speaker 1: it to be an empty square, and it's rotatable between

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Speaker 1: these two permanent magnets. As you rotate the squid air,

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Speaker 1: it passes through the magnetic fields. This is similar to

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Speaker 1: having magnetic flux introduced to the copper wire that induces

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Speaker 1: current to flow, and that's where you get alternating current generators.

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Speaker 1: So uh. He also discovered something interesting. Henry's work involved

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Speaker 1: moving current through a wire which would create a magnetic field.

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Speaker 1: Faraday's work involved moving a current a copper wire through

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Speaker 1: a magnetic field in order to generate a current. So

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Speaker 1: with Henry's work, they discovered that the magnetic field generated

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Speaker 1: by one electro magnet could induce current to flow in

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Speaker 1: a second electro magnet that wasn't hooked up to the

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Speaker 1: first circuit. This became the basis for an important innovation,

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Speaker 1: that being the A C transformer I mentioned earlier that

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Speaker 1: steps up or steps down voltage. Now, remember voltage is

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Speaker 1: akin to pressure. If you were looking at a water

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Speaker 1: based system, voltage would be the water pressure. It's the

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Speaker 1: push behind a current. And while this early work created

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Speaker 1: the foundation for the transformer, it would take half a

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Speaker 1: century for someone to build a practical, commercially reliable transformer.

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Speaker 1: That person was William Stanley, and we'll talk more about

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Speaker 1: him in just a little bit, But first we have

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Speaker 1: to talk about another invention that relied on electricity and

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Speaker 1: was very important for the adoption of electricity, and that

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Speaker 1: is the telegraph. The telegraph was a means of communication

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Speaker 1: that took advantage of electro magnetism. So once people figured

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Speaker 1: out the nature between electricity and magnetism, they started coming

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Speaker 1: up with some practical applications of this. The telegraph was

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Speaker 1: one of those early ones, and it was incredible. It

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Speaker 1: transformed communication, particularly here in the United States, but all

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Speaker 1: over the world as well. So lots of people were

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Speaker 1: exploring the scientific and practical applications of electricity and magnetism,

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Speaker 1: but two groups were specifically looking at it in terms

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Speaker 1: of communication systems. So over in jolly old England you

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Speaker 1: had Sir William Cook and Sir Charles Charles Wheatstone who

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Speaker 1: were exploring this possibility, and here in the United States

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Speaker 1: you had Samuel Morse, Alfred Vale, and Leonard Gail working

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Speaker 1: on this. Now, both sets of researchers realized that using

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Speaker 1: electricity to manipulate magnetized pieces of metal could allow for

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Speaker 1: a communication system. The Cook and Wheatstone system was an

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Speaker 1: experiment that began in the eighteen thirties. With magnetic needles.

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Speaker 1: There were positions so they could point at various letters

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Speaker 1: and numbers. So imagine that you've got a needle on

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Speaker 1: a that can rotate horizontally. It's it's on a horizontal plane,

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Speaker 1: it can rotate around and around on a balance, and

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Speaker 1: you've got letters that are arranged around the needle. And

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Speaker 1: by running an electric current through a circuit, you can

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Speaker 1: create a magnetic field that attracts the needle, so it

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Speaker 1: looks like it's pointing at a specific letter. It's actually

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Speaker 1: pointing in the direction of whatever the magnetic field is,

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Speaker 1: but it looks like it's pointing specifically at the letter.

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Speaker 1: So using several of these needles, I think they had

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Speaker 1: five set up in a panel with a bunch of

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Speaker 1: letters and numbers, they could communicate. You could just choose

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Speaker 1: which circuit you're activating to magnetize a specific point around

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Speaker 1: those needles. The needles would start to point in those

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Speaker 1: directions and you could spell out various messages. These ended

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Speaker 1: up being used in the British railroad signaling service. Now

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Speaker 1: over in the United States, Morse, Veil and Gale began

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Speaker 1: work on a single circuit telegraph system and it involved

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Speaker 1: a sending station where you had an operating key and

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Speaker 1: this would complete an electric circuit whenever you pressed it.

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Speaker 1: So an operator key it looks like a little almost

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Speaker 1: looks like a stapler. When you press it down, it

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Speaker 1: would create a closed circuit and allow a signal to

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Speaker 1: pass through to the other end. When you would lift

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Speaker 1: it back up or remove pressure from it, it would

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Speaker 1: break that circuit and electric current would cease to flow.

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Speaker 1: So you had a battery that was providing power. Every

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Speaker 1: time you would push down, it would complete this circuit

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Speaker 1: and a signal would be sent to the receiving station.

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Speaker 1: Uh the original station had an apparatus that would make

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Speaker 1: marks on paper, and so Morse ended up developing the

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Speaker 1: famous Morse code. Morse code is a way of encoding

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Speaker 1: letters in a series of dots and dashes. You represent

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Speaker 1: this on an operator key by the length of time

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Speaker 1: you spend pressing the key downward. So for a dot

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Speaker 1: you do a quick press, it's just a quick jolt

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Speaker 1: of electricity through the circuit. For a dash, the press

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Speaker 1: is a little bit longer, so that it's it comes across.

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Speaker 1: And on the other end, you add a system that

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Speaker 1: would essentially make marks on paper, so you could see

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Speaker 1: dots or dashes. Morse was very clever in this way.

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Speaker 1: He also made sure that the most commonly used letters

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Speaker 1: had the simplest of encodings, so very a very common

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Speaker 1: letter might have a single dot or a single dash.

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Speaker 1: More rare letters like a Q might have more complicated

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Speaker 1: encoding because you don't have to use it as frequently,

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Speaker 1: so you save all the simple encoding for your most

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Speaker 1: common letters. Now, they noticed something really interesting, which is

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Speaker 1: that as operators began to get used to the system,

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Speaker 1: they were able to start understanding messages without having to

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Speaker 1: read the dots and dashes, because they would just hear

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Speaker 1: what was coming out. They would hear the receiving station

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Speaker 1: tapping out either the dots or dashes to market on

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Speaker 1: the paper. And once they started getting used to this

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Speaker 1: and understanding what those taps were meaning like the long

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Speaker 1: taps versus the short taps. It became clear that you

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Speaker 1: didn't need to have the paper at all. You could

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Speaker 1: have a receiving station that would beep either short or

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Speaker 1: longer beeps to let you know whether whether it was

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Speaker 1: a daughter or a dash, and operators were able to

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Speaker 1: just pick it up by hearing it because they became

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Speaker 1: so used to it. And so future telegraph stations would

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Speaker 1: get rid of the paper and just become the beeping receiver,

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Speaker 1: so that an operator would transcribe whatever the message was

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Speaker 1: and then deliver it to whomever was supposed to get it.

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Speaker 1: In eighteen forty three, Morse and Veil were able to

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Speaker 1: secure funding for a telegraph system that was between Washington,

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Speaker 1: d c. And Baltimore, Maryland. That's not terribly far in

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Speaker 1: the grand scheme of things, but it was a big

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Speaker 1: deal at the time. The first message sent on the

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Speaker 1: news system went out on May fourth, eighteen forty four.

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Speaker 1: It was sent from Samuel Morse to Veil and it

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Speaker 1: read what hath God wrought? It's a little bit of

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Speaker 1: drama in the first message. It's just like social media today. Really.

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Speaker 1: Over the following decades, telegraph systems began to connect more

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Speaker 1: cities together, even as inventors were trying to find other

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Speaker 1: practical applications of electricity. So other people would make improvements

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Speaker 1: to the telegraph and make it more user friendly and

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Speaker 1: more useful. Uh some. Some of those people included Ezra Cornell,

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Speaker 1: who created a means to insulate telegraph wires and make

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Speaker 1: them more efficient. Cornell would go on to co found

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Speaker 1: a college it's called Cornell and Thomas Edison, famous inventor

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Speaker 1: and irascible gentleman, also made some improvements to the telegraph,

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Speaker 1: including creating a system called the quadruplex, which, as the

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Speaker 1: name might suggest, would allow up to four messages to

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Speaker 1: transmit over the same wire simultaneously, to going in one

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Speaker 1: direction and to coming through from the other direction. Now,

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Speaker 1: one of Stanley's inspirations was another inventor named Charles Brush. Brush,

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Speaker 1: in turn had been inspired by Humphrey Davy. So we

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Speaker 1: see that there's a chain forming here. So Davy was

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Speaker 1: the one who created that early arc light. Well, Brush

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Speaker 1: thought the arc lights were super cool, and as a

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Speaker 1: teenager he started to really tinker with stuff. He would

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Speaker 1: start to neglect his chores in the family farm just

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Speaker 1: so he could work on various projects in a workshop,

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Speaker 1: and he built his first static electricity machine when he

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Speaker 1: was just twelve years old. In high school, he built

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Speaker 1: an arc light of his very own, so by high

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Speaker 1: school age he was building stuff that Humphrey Davy had

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Speaker 1: pioneered a few decades earlier. In college, he pursued a

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Speaker 1: degree in mining engineering at the University of Michigan because

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Speaker 1: there was no such thing as an electrical engineering degree

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Speaker 1: at that time. And after working in the iron ore

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Speaker 1: industry for a while, he began a big project to

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Speaker 1: build a dynamo. Now, a dynamo is a direct current generator.

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Speaker 1: It's like what I described at the end of the

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Speaker 1: last episode. It's essentially an alternating current generator that has

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Speaker 1: a commutator to convert alternating current to direct current. Brush

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Speaker 1: also convinced the city of Cleveland to allow him to

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Speaker 1: fit out Cleveland's public square, which at that time was

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Speaker 1: called Monumental Park, with electrical arc lights, and up to

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Speaker 1: that point the lights in the square had been gas lamps.

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Speaker 1: So on April twenty eight, seventy nine, the city switched

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Speaker 1: on the new arc lights. The public reaction was most

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Speaker 1: sleep positive. There were only a few people who were

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Speaker 1: saying stuff like it's not as brow as the sun,

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Speaker 1: which tells us that some people were impossible to please

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Speaker 1: even before they had Twitter to post public messages about it. Now,

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Speaker 1: Brush's work advanced our understanding of the electromotive force, which

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Speaker 1: is the force that causes electrons to push in a

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Speaker 1: direction within a conductor, generating a current, and it was

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Speaker 1: that understanding that William Stanley started to build upon. Stanley

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Speaker 1: wanted to work with alternating current, which at that time

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Speaker 1: was mostly seen as interesting but not practical. Everyone was

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Speaker 1: thinking direct current was probably the way to go, and

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Speaker 1: Stanley wasn't entirely convinced. He thought alternating current might have

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Speaker 1: its uses. In fact, at the time, Stanley wrote that

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Speaker 1: the general thought on alternating current from his contemporaries was

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Speaker 1: that it was a despised and rejected line of work.

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Speaker 1: But Stanley was convinced there was something more to it.

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Speaker 1: Now obviously, when we start looking at way to distribute electricity,

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Speaker 1: it became clear that alternating current, at least initially was

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Speaker 1: superior to direct current, and in Stanley began to work

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Speaker 1: with George Westinghouse's company called Westinghouse. Westinghouse himself heard of

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Speaker 1: Stanley's contributions and promoted him to chief engineer of the

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Speaker 1: Westinghouse Pittsburgh facility. And Stanley then learned of Lucien Gallard

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Speaker 1: and John Gibbs, who had built an alternating current transformer.

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Speaker 1: The problem was that the transformer they had built wasn't

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Speaker 1: really commercially viable, so Stanley wanted to take that same

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Speaker 1: idea and design a transformer that would have real world applications. Now,

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Speaker 1: what is a transformer and how does it actually work

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Speaker 1: to change voltage? Will look at that in just a minute,

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Speaker 1: but first let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor.

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Speaker 1: All Right, So, what the heck is a transformer? I've

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Speaker 1: talked and I said steps up and steps down voltage,

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Speaker 1: but I haven't really explained it. Well. It all relies

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Speaker 1: upon that electromotive force and fundamental electro magnetic forces. You

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Speaker 1: remember that when you move a conductor through a magnetic field,

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Speaker 1: the field induces electric current to flow through the conductor.

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Speaker 1: But to do this, you have to keep moving the

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Speaker 1: conductor through the field, unless you move the field instead

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Speaker 1: of the conductor and you keep the conductor in place. Now,

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Speaker 1: one of the ways you could do that is you

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Speaker 1: could create an electro magnet using alternating current, and that

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Speaker 1: would give you the same effect of moving a magnetic

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Speaker 1: field around a conductor. Because remember I mentioned earlier, when

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Speaker 1: the inventors were looking at how electric current generates a

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Speaker 1: magnetic field, they thought of it as as current travels

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Speaker 1: down a wire, a magnetic field is generated as a

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Speaker 1: circle around that wire, with the wire being the or

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Speaker 1: or hub of that circle, if you think of it

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Speaker 1: that way. While if electricity reverses, then the magnetic field

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Speaker 1: changes direction. That creates magnetic flux because it's the same

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Speaker 1: thing as moving a conductor through a stationary magnetic field

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Speaker 1: back and forth. Like if you took a piece of

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Speaker 1: metal conductive metal and you waved it through a magnetic

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Speaker 1: field repeatedly, you could induce electricity to flow through the conductor.

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Speaker 1: The same thing is true if you have this alternating

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Speaker 1: current electro magnet. And remember that alternating current switches voltages

434
00:26:38,640 --> 00:26:40,879
Speaker 1: on either end of the conductor several times a second,

435
00:26:41,280 --> 00:26:44,080
Speaker 1: So that's what's making the electricity flow in different directions,

436
00:26:44,119 --> 00:26:46,000
Speaker 1: one direction at one point, the other direction at the

437
00:26:46,040 --> 00:26:49,560
Speaker 1: other point. If you're looking at your traditional alternating current generator,

438
00:26:50,160 --> 00:26:56,520
Speaker 1: it's when the conductor breaks that uh, perpendicular plane or

439
00:26:56,640 --> 00:26:59,520
Speaker 1: really no, I'm sorry, the parallel plane to the magnetic

440
00:26:59,560 --> 00:27:03,040
Speaker 1: field and starts to move, so that the side that

441
00:27:03,200 --> 00:27:07,080
Speaker 1: was going up with a relation to a magnetic field

442
00:27:07,119 --> 00:27:10,560
Speaker 1: is now moving down. That's what ends up creating this

443
00:27:10,680 --> 00:27:17,160
Speaker 1: alternating current. So every time you change that current direction,

444
00:27:17,240 --> 00:27:20,640
Speaker 1: the magnetic field also changes. If you were to introduce

445
00:27:20,680 --> 00:27:25,679
Speaker 1: a second conductive material within range of that alternating magnetic field,

446
00:27:26,440 --> 00:27:31,120
Speaker 1: that would induce a similar alternating current in the secondary conductor.

447
00:27:31,640 --> 00:27:34,080
Speaker 1: So let's say you've got an electro magnet and it

448
00:27:34,119 --> 00:27:37,080
Speaker 1: consists of an iron core, and around this iron core

449
00:27:37,200 --> 00:27:41,240
Speaker 1: you've wrapped insulated copper wire twenty times. So let's say

450
00:27:41,240 --> 00:27:44,119
Speaker 1: you've got an iron nail, and you've got some copper

451
00:27:44,160 --> 00:27:48,680
Speaker 1: wire of a fairly small gage, and you do twenty

452
00:27:48,800 --> 00:27:53,960
Speaker 1: coils around this iron nail. This is your electromagnet. If

453
00:27:54,000 --> 00:27:55,760
Speaker 1: you are to hook this up to a battery, it

454
00:27:55,800 --> 00:28:01,359
Speaker 1: would create a direct current through the uh, the the wire,

455
00:28:01,400 --> 00:28:04,399
Speaker 1: and you would have an electromagnet. But that's just a

456
00:28:04,480 --> 00:28:06,760
Speaker 1: simple electromagnet. Let's say that you hooked it up to

457
00:28:06,760 --> 00:28:10,800
Speaker 1: an alternating current. Now the current is moving down from

458
00:28:10,840 --> 00:28:12,360
Speaker 1: the top of the nail to the bottom of the nail,

459
00:28:12,400 --> 00:28:13,639
Speaker 1: and then from the bottom of the nail to the

460
00:28:13,640 --> 00:28:16,600
Speaker 1: top of the nail, more over and over and over again,

461
00:28:16,720 --> 00:28:22,720
Speaker 1: several times a second. That creates a fluctuating magnetic field. Now,

462
00:28:22,760 --> 00:28:26,320
Speaker 1: let's say you get a second nail with a second

463
00:28:26,480 --> 00:28:29,000
Speaker 1: length of copper wire wrapped around it. This one is

464
00:28:29,040 --> 00:28:32,399
Speaker 1: not attached to a battery or a power system. You

465
00:28:32,480 --> 00:28:35,680
Speaker 1: bring that one close to the first one, which will

466
00:28:35,720 --> 00:28:39,840
Speaker 1: be your primary electromagnet. You bring this secondary electromagnet close

467
00:28:39,920 --> 00:28:43,480
Speaker 1: to it. Once it's within that fluctuating magnetic field, it's

468
00:28:43,480 --> 00:28:48,320
Speaker 1: going to induce current to flow through the second electro magnet.

469
00:28:48,360 --> 00:28:50,680
Speaker 1: Even though it's not hooked up to a power source,

470
00:28:50,880 --> 00:28:55,560
Speaker 1: it will start to have electric current induced in it. Uh.

471
00:28:55,600 --> 00:29:00,000
Speaker 1: This is the basis for the transformer. But by itself,

472
00:29:00,040 --> 00:29:03,360
Speaker 1: it's not that useful because you're not you're not changing

473
00:29:03,400 --> 00:29:06,480
Speaker 1: the voltage at all. You're just inducing electric current to

474
00:29:06,480 --> 00:29:11,800
Speaker 1: flow through a secondary coil. But if your second electromagnet

475
00:29:11,840 --> 00:29:14,760
Speaker 1: has a different number of coils from the first one,

476
00:29:15,120 --> 00:29:18,120
Speaker 1: as in you've wrapped the copper wire more times or

477
00:29:18,280 --> 00:29:22,000
Speaker 1: fewer times than the one you have on your primary electromagnet,

478
00:29:22,480 --> 00:29:26,080
Speaker 1: the second electromagnet will have a different voltage than the first.

479
00:29:26,960 --> 00:29:29,720
Speaker 1: So again, let's say you've got that iron nail and

480
00:29:29,760 --> 00:29:34,200
Speaker 1: you've wrapped copper coil around it twenty times, and your

481
00:29:34,240 --> 00:29:37,720
Speaker 1: secondary one, your iron nail, you've only wrapped it ten

482
00:29:37,840 --> 00:29:42,400
Speaker 1: times around. Well, this will step the voltage down by half.

483
00:29:42,560 --> 00:29:46,360
Speaker 1: The voltage in your new your secondary electromagnet will be

484
00:29:46,440 --> 00:29:49,640
Speaker 1: half of what it is in the primary one. But

485
00:29:49,760 --> 00:29:52,680
Speaker 1: if you are primary one has twenty coils and your

486
00:29:52,680 --> 00:29:57,360
Speaker 1: secondary one has forty coils, this will step up the

487
00:29:57,440 --> 00:30:01,520
Speaker 1: voltage by twice the original amount. So whatever the voltage

488
00:30:01,640 --> 00:30:03,920
Speaker 1: was in your original circuit, it will be twice as

489
00:30:03,920 --> 00:30:06,600
Speaker 1: powerful in your secondary one because you have twice the

490
00:30:06,680 --> 00:30:11,520
Speaker 1: number of coils. The number of coils in your secondary

491
00:30:11,560 --> 00:30:15,600
Speaker 1: circuit is going to determine whether the voltage is stepped

492
00:30:15,640 --> 00:30:21,040
Speaker 1: up or stepped down. Stanley Builder prototype transformer for high

493
00:30:21,120 --> 00:30:26,960
Speaker 1: voltage transmission and demonstrated it on March six. He then

494
00:30:27,040 --> 00:30:30,240
Speaker 1: got wrapped up in some serious drama in the electrical

495
00:30:30,360 --> 00:30:32,960
Speaker 1: utility industry, which I'll talk about a bit later. But

496
00:30:33,000 --> 00:30:35,760
Speaker 1: holy cal If you think Hollywood and politics are all

497
00:30:35,760 --> 00:30:38,680
Speaker 1: about backstabbing and scandal, wait till we get to the

498
00:30:38,720 --> 00:30:43,880
Speaker 1: Shenanigans during the current wars because people got messed up.

499
00:30:45,040 --> 00:30:50,880
Speaker 1: There were all sorts of back, backstage dealings and just

500
00:30:52,440 --> 00:30:55,960
Speaker 1: shady practices, people not getting paid, people getting forced out

501
00:30:56,000 --> 00:30:58,760
Speaker 1: of the business. It was really cut throat in the

502
00:30:59,080 --> 00:31:05,520
Speaker 1: late nineteen than early twentieth centuries. Now remember sense voltage

503
00:31:05,720 --> 00:31:08,840
Speaker 1: is the force or pressure that pushes electric current through

504
00:31:09,560 --> 00:31:11,920
Speaker 1: when you use a transformer. Can come in mighty handy

505
00:31:11,960 --> 00:31:14,400
Speaker 1: if you want to distribute power across the system, because,

506
00:31:14,440 --> 00:31:18,320
Speaker 1: as it turns out, to transmit power efficiently, you need

507
00:31:18,400 --> 00:31:21,840
Speaker 1: to have high voltage. You've got to have a lot

508
00:31:21,920 --> 00:31:27,280
Speaker 1: of pressure to transmit power over significant distances. If you

509
00:31:27,320 --> 00:31:29,920
Speaker 1: don't have high pressure, you can only transmit power a

510
00:31:30,000 --> 00:31:33,600
Speaker 1: short distance before the efficiency drops to nothing. So you've

511
00:31:33,600 --> 00:31:35,360
Speaker 1: got to have a lot of force. Now this again,

512
00:31:35,400 --> 00:31:37,360
Speaker 1: if you think of it in terms of a water system,

513
00:31:37,440 --> 00:31:40,800
Speaker 1: this makes sense. If you have very low water pressure,

514
00:31:41,320 --> 00:31:44,200
Speaker 1: that's gonna be hard to get a shower on the

515
00:31:44,280 --> 00:31:47,560
Speaker 1: top floor of a hotel, for example, to have much

516
00:31:47,600 --> 00:31:51,200
Speaker 1: of anything happened. Uh, if you have very very high

517
00:31:51,200 --> 00:31:54,160
Speaker 1: water pressure, it may be that on the first floor

518
00:31:54,200 --> 00:31:56,040
Speaker 1: you might feel like the shower is gonna push you

519
00:31:56,040 --> 00:32:00,360
Speaker 1: through the back wall. So you need that high foltage

520
00:32:00,360 --> 00:32:05,160
Speaker 1: because you need that high pressure to transmit electricity great distances.

521
00:32:05,600 --> 00:32:11,040
Speaker 1: That's really what Stanley was looking at. So using transformers,

522
00:32:11,080 --> 00:32:13,520
Speaker 1: you can step up or step down the voltage as

523
00:32:13,600 --> 00:32:17,560
Speaker 1: needed for distribution purposes. So at the power generation site,

524
00:32:17,880 --> 00:32:20,880
Speaker 1: you might generate power at a specific voltage and then

525
00:32:20,920 --> 00:32:24,719
Speaker 1: you want to transmit it fifty miles away, so you

526
00:32:24,800 --> 00:32:28,560
Speaker 1: use a transformer to step up that voltage to make

527
00:32:28,600 --> 00:32:31,840
Speaker 1: it a high voltage signal so that it will transmit

528
00:32:31,880 --> 00:32:37,240
Speaker 1: efficiently across the power lines. You've you've you've strung between

529
00:32:37,280 --> 00:32:42,240
Speaker 1: your generation point and your destination. Once it reaches the destination,

530
00:32:42,720 --> 00:32:45,240
Speaker 1: you go through a second type of transformer to step

531
00:32:45,280 --> 00:32:48,520
Speaker 1: the voltage back down. So it's appropriate for whatever you

532
00:32:48,560 --> 00:32:52,720
Speaker 1: want to use it for. So when you see transformers

533
00:32:53,240 --> 00:32:58,640
Speaker 1: on utility polls around cities and on houses, they're they're

534
00:32:58,680 --> 00:33:02,080
Speaker 1: usually small. Transform was attached to those as well. The

535
00:33:02,160 --> 00:33:04,920
Speaker 1: purpose of that is so that it can either step

536
00:33:05,000 --> 00:33:07,520
Speaker 1: up the voltage so it can transmit it, or step

537
00:33:07,560 --> 00:33:10,840
Speaker 1: down the voltage so I can deliver that electricity to home.

538
00:33:11,280 --> 00:33:13,480
Speaker 1: These are also the things that when they get overloaded,

539
00:33:13,600 --> 00:33:17,040
Speaker 1: they explode in a ton of sparks, they get shorted out,

540
00:33:17,120 --> 00:33:19,960
Speaker 1: they get they get too much electricity pushed through it

541
00:33:20,080 --> 00:33:21,959
Speaker 1: one time. This can happen if you have like a

542
00:33:21,960 --> 00:33:24,720
Speaker 1: really serious electrical storm. And if you've ever heard of

543
00:33:24,720 --> 00:33:28,240
Speaker 1: transformer go off, it is unforgettable. It sounds like a

544
00:33:28,280 --> 00:33:31,600
Speaker 1: shotgun and sparks fly everywhere. The first time I ever

545
00:33:31,600 --> 00:33:34,560
Speaker 1: saw one do that, I was a kid in the

546
00:33:34,680 --> 00:33:37,200
Speaker 1: back seat of my parents cars. We were driving through

547
00:33:37,240 --> 00:33:40,760
Speaker 1: downtown Atlanta, and I grew up in rural Georgia, so

548
00:33:40,920 --> 00:33:46,080
Speaker 1: I'm from backwoods country up in Georgia and wasn't used

549
00:33:46,120 --> 00:33:49,959
Speaker 1: to seeing explosions go off right outside the car window

550
00:33:50,040 --> 00:33:54,400
Speaker 1: in a city. It gave me a very specific and

551
00:33:54,520 --> 00:33:58,080
Speaker 1: as it turns out, not entirely accurate, accurate view of

552
00:33:58,120 --> 00:34:02,720
Speaker 1: what city life must be like. It was a special circumstance.

553
00:34:04,120 --> 00:34:07,280
Speaker 1: Now we're at the dawn of the electrical age. So

554
00:34:07,360 --> 00:34:11,560
Speaker 1: you had Brush's arc lighting system that showed electricity did

555
00:34:11,560 --> 00:34:15,080
Speaker 1: have practical uses outside the laboratory. You had worked with

556
00:34:15,200 --> 00:34:17,880
Speaker 1: d C and a C generators. That was progressing. And

557
00:34:17,920 --> 00:34:19,480
Speaker 1: now it's time to talk about some of the big

558
00:34:19,560 --> 00:34:23,480
Speaker 1: names I haven't really talked about extensively yet. Namely Tom

559
00:34:23,480 --> 00:34:26,680
Speaker 1: Thomas Yison and Nicola Tesla. So, first of all, a

560
00:34:26,680 --> 00:34:29,160
Speaker 1: lot of people when they talk about Tesla seemed to

561
00:34:29,200 --> 00:34:34,239
Speaker 1: think that he invented alternating current. He did not. There

562
00:34:34,239 --> 00:34:37,640
Speaker 1: were inventors who were working with alternating current before Tesla

563
00:34:37,719 --> 00:34:41,959
Speaker 1: was even born. They didn't really know what it would

564
00:34:42,000 --> 00:34:46,160
Speaker 1: be good for. But alternating current existed before Tesla came along,

565
00:34:46,760 --> 00:34:50,719
Speaker 1: and transformers existed before Tesla came along. He didn't even

566
00:34:50,800 --> 00:34:55,359
Speaker 1: invent the alternating current transformer. He did, however, make significant

567
00:34:55,400 --> 00:34:59,040
Speaker 1: improvements to transformer technology so that it became a much

568
00:34:59,080 --> 00:35:03,840
Speaker 1: more commercially viable tech, and he made some great strides

569
00:35:04,000 --> 00:35:05,840
Speaker 1: in that field. So I don't want to take anything

570
00:35:05,840 --> 00:35:09,080
Speaker 1: away from Tesla. I don't want to say that he

571
00:35:09,160 --> 00:35:12,080
Speaker 1: didn't make any significant contributions or that he was just

572
00:35:12,080 --> 00:35:15,239
Speaker 1: whackadoodle crazy. That's not that's someone I'm saying at all.

573
00:35:15,280 --> 00:35:17,280
Speaker 1: First of all, we don't know if he was crazy.

574
00:35:17,520 --> 00:35:21,800
Speaker 1: He was certainly eccentric. And second of all, he made

575
00:35:22,080 --> 00:35:28,080
Speaker 1: very significant contributions to our understanding of and use of electricity.

576
00:35:28,120 --> 00:35:32,000
Speaker 1: But again, if we ignore the contributions of other people

577
00:35:32,000 --> 00:35:34,320
Speaker 1: were doing them a disservice. So that's why I'm bringing

578
00:35:34,320 --> 00:35:38,080
Speaker 1: this up. I should also mention Tesla, as eccentric as

579
00:35:38,120 --> 00:35:41,840
Speaker 1: he got and as grandiose as his ego was, he

580
00:35:42,040 --> 00:35:46,719
Speaker 1: definitely did not deserve the mistreatment he was subjected to

581
00:35:46,680 --> 00:35:49,160
Speaker 1: towards the end of his life. He was not prepared

582
00:35:49,640 --> 00:35:53,760
Speaker 1: for the drama that would unfold as he got older.

583
00:35:54,400 --> 00:35:57,600
Speaker 1: Thomas says in Meanwhile, tends to be portrayed as one

584
00:35:57,640 --> 00:36:00,400
Speaker 1: of two things. It depends on whether you're pro Edison

585
00:36:00,640 --> 00:36:04,800
Speaker 1: or anti Edison. You're there are two versions of Edison

586
00:36:04,880 --> 00:36:09,600
Speaker 1: that tend to be presented to people. He's either a

587
00:36:09,640 --> 00:36:13,160
Speaker 1: brilliant inventor and he's a guy who just held more

588
00:36:13,200 --> 00:36:19,840
Speaker 1: patents than anyone else and was incredibly uh uh ingenious,

589
00:36:20,040 --> 00:36:28,240
Speaker 1: or he was a manipulative, vindictive businessman who was mostly disliked, standoffish.

590
00:36:28,560 --> 00:36:31,080
Speaker 1: Only a few people really took to him, and he

591
00:36:31,080 --> 00:36:33,319
Speaker 1: would take credit for things they had very little to

592
00:36:33,400 --> 00:36:37,400
Speaker 1: no involvement in. In other words, he would have engineers

593
00:36:37,440 --> 00:36:39,399
Speaker 1: working for him that would invent stuff, and he would

594
00:36:39,440 --> 00:36:43,080
Speaker 1: just append his name to the patents. Thus, his name

595
00:36:43,120 --> 00:36:45,040
Speaker 1: was attached to more patents than anyone else. But if

596
00:36:45,080 --> 00:36:47,239
Speaker 1: you were to look into it, you might say, well,

597
00:36:47,360 --> 00:36:49,879
Speaker 1: Edison didn't really have much to do with this invention. Now,

598
00:36:49,880 --> 00:36:54,680
Speaker 1: the truth is between those two extremes. So you've got

599
00:36:54,719 --> 00:36:58,520
Speaker 1: the pro Edison people saying he was a brilliant man

600
00:36:58,640 --> 00:37:02,920
Speaker 1: and businessman, invented a ton of stuff that we I

601
00:37:02,920 --> 00:37:06,440
Speaker 1: think that's the very foundation of electronics today. And then

602
00:37:06,480 --> 00:37:08,239
Speaker 1: you have the other people saying, no, he was kind

603
00:37:08,280 --> 00:37:15,680
Speaker 1: of a manipulative businessman who who really uh took advantage

604
00:37:15,680 --> 00:37:19,080
Speaker 1: of other people. And the truth is not either of

605
00:37:19,120 --> 00:37:21,920
Speaker 1: those extremes. He was a person like any other person,

606
00:37:22,000 --> 00:37:28,160
Speaker 1: with with faults and with virtues. So I will try

607
00:37:28,200 --> 00:37:31,840
Speaker 1: my best not to paint him too far in either direction.

608
00:37:33,239 --> 00:37:38,000
Speaker 1: But like brush, Edison was born in Ohio. Ohio boasts

609
00:37:38,040 --> 00:37:42,839
Speaker 1: two of the most prolific engineers who worked in the

610
00:37:42,880 --> 00:37:46,360
Speaker 1: field of electricity, and as a child he was intelligent,

611
00:37:46,400 --> 00:37:49,680
Speaker 1: but he was easily distracted. He also had difficulty hearing,

612
00:37:50,640 --> 00:37:53,839
Speaker 1: initially because of about with scarlet fever. He also had

613
00:37:53,880 --> 00:37:57,760
Speaker 1: a few incidents that probably depleted his hearing further, including

614
00:37:57,760 --> 00:38:00,279
Speaker 1: getting cuffed on the side of the head by an

615
00:38:00,320 --> 00:38:03,800
Speaker 1: engineer Once upon a time. In the mid eighteen hundreds,

616
00:38:03,920 --> 00:38:06,799
Speaker 1: Edison found work as a telegraph operator, and he was

617
00:38:06,840 --> 00:38:08,960
Speaker 1: still a teenager at the time. He did so because

618
00:38:09,000 --> 00:38:13,719
Speaker 1: he rescued a the son of a telegraph engineer, from

619
00:38:13,719 --> 00:38:16,440
Speaker 1: being run down by a train, and as a reward,

620
00:38:16,520 --> 00:38:19,880
Speaker 1: he was given a position as a telegraph operator. He

621
00:38:19,960 --> 00:38:24,719
Speaker 1: continued tinkering with gadgets as he was growing older, and

622
00:38:25,040 --> 00:38:28,880
Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty nine he invented stuff like the universal

623
00:38:28,920 --> 00:38:32,640
Speaker 1: stock printer, which made him a ton of money like

624
00:38:32,719 --> 00:38:36,680
Speaker 1: forty dollars, which in the late nineteenth century was an

625
00:38:36,880 --> 00:38:39,840
Speaker 1: enormous sum and allowed him to set up business for himself.

626
00:38:41,000 --> 00:38:43,359
Speaker 1: By the eighteen seventies and eighteen eighties, he had found

627
00:38:43,440 --> 00:38:47,040
Speaker 1: much success working with giant companies like Western Union, and

628
00:38:47,600 --> 00:38:51,360
Speaker 1: he operated a laboratory and employed other machinists and inventors

629
00:38:51,360 --> 00:38:54,360
Speaker 1: to work with him. First they had a lab in Newark,

630
00:38:54,480 --> 00:38:57,360
Speaker 1: New Jersey, and then later in Menlo Park, New Jersey.

631
00:38:58,920 --> 00:39:03,120
Speaker 1: In eighteen eighty who Edison opened the Pearl Street Generating

632
00:39:03,160 --> 00:39:08,160
Speaker 1: Station in Lower Manhattan. It provided a hundred ten volts

633
00:39:08,200 --> 00:39:11,839
Speaker 1: of electrical power to just fifty nine customers, so at

634
00:39:11,880 --> 00:39:15,840
Speaker 1: this time it was the first central power station in

635
00:39:15,880 --> 00:39:18,640
Speaker 1: the United States, and as a central power station, it

636
00:39:18,680 --> 00:39:22,480
Speaker 1: could only deliver power to areas that were close to

637
00:39:22,560 --> 00:39:25,640
Speaker 1: the to the generation station. This was using direct current,

638
00:39:25,719 --> 00:39:28,720
Speaker 1: and it wasn't high voltage direct current, so it couldn't

639
00:39:28,719 --> 00:39:32,160
Speaker 1: go very far before the efficiency dropped to nothing. It

640
00:39:32,239 --> 00:39:35,560
Speaker 1: also meant that it limited the number of customers that

641
00:39:35,600 --> 00:39:39,000
Speaker 1: you could have. Not many people had any use for electricity.

642
00:39:39,080 --> 00:39:44,160
Speaker 1: Only a few places had outfitted their buildings with electric lighting,

643
00:39:44,200 --> 00:39:46,840
Speaker 1: for example, so you might find a hotel like a

644
00:39:46,920 --> 00:39:50,600
Speaker 1: Posh Hotel might have upgrade to electric lights. Some of

645
00:39:50,600 --> 00:39:56,200
Speaker 1: the mansions like Westinghouse's mansion, had electric lights, but most

646
00:39:56,200 --> 00:40:00,440
Speaker 1: people did not have any need for electricity yet. However,

647
00:40:00,480 --> 00:40:04,560
Speaker 1: it was an early generating station in the US. It

648
00:40:04,600 --> 00:40:07,560
Speaker 1: didn't exactly usher in a whirlwind of electric systems though,

649
00:40:07,560 --> 00:40:11,120
Speaker 1: and the reason for that again goes to that transmission efficiency.

650
00:40:11,880 --> 00:40:16,000
Speaker 1: You needed that high voltage in order to send electricity

651
00:40:16,360 --> 00:40:18,760
Speaker 1: a great distance. If you want to use direct current

652
00:40:19,239 --> 00:40:22,960
Speaker 1: and you weren't able to generate a high voltage direct current,

653
00:40:23,640 --> 00:40:26,319
Speaker 1: then what you would do is build a lot of

654
00:40:26,360 --> 00:40:29,759
Speaker 1: power stations close to where you needed them. That's not

655
00:40:29,880 --> 00:40:33,120
Speaker 1: very practical, especially as areas get larger, and if you

656
00:40:33,160 --> 00:40:36,440
Speaker 1: want to deliver electricity to people who are not in

657
00:40:36,480 --> 00:40:41,080
Speaker 1: an urban setting, it becomes extremely problematic. It would be

658
00:40:41,080 --> 00:40:43,920
Speaker 1: better if you could use high voltage because then you

659
00:40:43,920 --> 00:40:46,640
Speaker 1: could send it out from a central station to much

660
00:40:46,719 --> 00:40:51,280
Speaker 1: further distances. But at the time there wasn't a practical

661
00:40:51,320 --> 00:40:56,000
Speaker 1: way of doing high voltage direct current, so alternating current

662
00:40:56,239 --> 00:41:02,360
Speaker 1: had a different approach. Remember, direct current does not work

663
00:41:02,680 --> 00:41:06,319
Speaker 1: with transformers. You have to have that magnetic flux. You

664
00:41:06,360 --> 00:41:09,960
Speaker 1: have to have that alternating magnetic field, so direct current

665
00:41:10,000 --> 00:41:12,879
Speaker 1: only generates a steady magnetic field. That's why you can't

666
00:41:12,920 --> 00:41:15,440
Speaker 1: do a transformer using direct current. You have to have

667
00:41:15,480 --> 00:41:21,360
Speaker 1: alternating current for transformers to work. So if I wanted

668
00:41:21,360 --> 00:41:24,520
Speaker 1: to transmit power a far distance, I would probably want

669
00:41:24,520 --> 00:41:28,520
Speaker 1: to use an alternating current power generator. Use transformers to

670
00:41:28,640 --> 00:41:31,280
Speaker 1: do what I had mentioned earlier, step up that voltage

671
00:41:31,320 --> 00:41:34,759
Speaker 1: for transmission, send it hundreds of miles to wherever I

672
00:41:34,800 --> 00:41:38,040
Speaker 1: need to use other transformers to step down the voltage

673
00:41:38,400 --> 00:41:41,640
Speaker 1: and then deliver it to my customers. Otherwise I would

674
00:41:41,680 --> 00:41:44,280
Speaker 1: need to build DC power stations near all the places

675
00:41:44,320 --> 00:41:49,200
Speaker 1: that required electricity. Now, given time and resources, Edison and

676
00:41:49,320 --> 00:41:53,239
Speaker 1: some of his fellow direct current advocates probably would have

677
00:41:53,280 --> 00:41:57,600
Speaker 1: designed a very compelling high voltage direct current system, and

678
00:41:57,840 --> 00:42:00,400
Speaker 1: the neat thing is, if you have a high voltage

679
00:42:00,440 --> 00:42:03,560
Speaker 1: direct current system, it can actually be more efficient than

680
00:42:03,680 --> 00:42:07,400
Speaker 1: alternating current, but at the time they didn't really have

681
00:42:07,719 --> 00:42:10,840
Speaker 1: a way of doing that, and alternating current had it

682
00:42:10,880 --> 00:42:13,359
Speaker 1: in the form of the transformers. So alternating current had

683
00:42:13,360 --> 00:42:16,440
Speaker 1: the initial advantage, which meant that people were more likely

684
00:42:16,520 --> 00:42:20,080
Speaker 1: to adopt it um. So we just had to figure

685
00:42:20,080 --> 00:42:23,080
Speaker 1: out the kinks and converting high voltage alternating current to

686
00:42:23,480 --> 00:42:26,240
Speaker 1: direct current in order to really make high voltage direct

687
00:42:26,239 --> 00:42:31,279
Speaker 1: current a more viable alternative. That initially started to happen

688
00:42:31,320 --> 00:42:33,680
Speaker 1: in the nineteen thirties. Of course, by the nineteen thirties

689
00:42:33,960 --> 00:42:37,239
Speaker 1: the electric power grids were already becoming standardized, so it

690
00:42:37,360 --> 00:42:39,399
Speaker 1: was it was like you you were trying to fight

691
00:42:39,400 --> 00:42:43,760
Speaker 1: against inertia and momentum. You couldn't really change things because

692
00:42:44,120 --> 00:42:47,400
Speaker 1: there had been so much investment and the alternating current

693
00:42:47,440 --> 00:42:51,080
Speaker 1: system that high voltage directed current didn't have much of

694
00:42:51,080 --> 00:42:55,280
Speaker 1: a chance in that time. But in the nineteen thirties

695
00:42:55,480 --> 00:42:58,920
Speaker 1: they used something called mercury arc valves in order to

696
00:42:59,280 --> 00:43:02,239
Speaker 1: do this con version of high voltage a C to

697
00:43:02,440 --> 00:43:05,600
Speaker 1: high voltage d C and then back again from d

698
00:43:05,680 --> 00:43:11,760
Speaker 1: C to a C. Uh So one place you would

699
00:43:11,760 --> 00:43:15,920
Speaker 1: want to do this because it just makes more sense

700
00:43:15,920 --> 00:43:21,040
Speaker 1: from an efficiency standpoint is for very long underwater cables.

701
00:43:23,320 --> 00:43:27,240
Speaker 1: Alternating current on an underwater cable has some other issues

702
00:43:27,280 --> 00:43:29,319
Speaker 1: with capacitance and some other things that are a little

703
00:43:29,320 --> 00:43:32,239
Speaker 1: too technical to get into here, but it's not as

704
00:43:32,280 --> 00:43:36,480
Speaker 1: efficient as high voltage direct current. So while it wasn't

705
00:43:36,719 --> 00:43:40,960
Speaker 1: terribly practical to switch from a C systems to d

706
00:43:41,000 --> 00:43:43,120
Speaker 1: C systems, once we were able to come up with

707
00:43:43,160 --> 00:43:48,120
Speaker 1: this high voltage DC strategy, it did make sense for

708
00:43:48,440 --> 00:43:52,440
Speaker 1: these very very long cables that would connect something like

709
00:43:52,480 --> 00:43:55,640
Speaker 1: an an offshore island to the mainland, so that you

710
00:43:55,640 --> 00:43:58,040
Speaker 1: could send power out to the island without having to

711
00:43:58,040 --> 00:44:01,640
Speaker 1: build a power station on the island at self. Then

712
00:44:01,680 --> 00:44:04,320
Speaker 1: it made more sense to use high voltage DC current.

713
00:44:04,840 --> 00:44:08,839
Speaker 1: But way back in the day it did not. It

714
00:44:08,880 --> 00:44:11,680
Speaker 1: did not exist. Today, we can also use d C

715
00:44:12,040 --> 00:44:16,480
Speaker 1: to connect two different alternating current power grids together, which

716
00:44:16,560 --> 00:44:20,920
Speaker 1: is non trivial because you remember I said alternating current

717
00:44:21,480 --> 00:44:25,680
Speaker 1: involves current moving back and forth across the circuit many

718
00:44:25,760 --> 00:44:28,640
Speaker 1: times per second. In the United States, it's sixty times

719
00:44:28,640 --> 00:44:31,640
Speaker 1: per second, and sixty hurts. The reason that we chose

720
00:44:31,680 --> 00:44:34,919
Speaker 1: sixty hurts in the first place. That's because of Westinghouse.

721
00:44:35,160 --> 00:44:38,320
Speaker 1: Westinghouse was the company that was really pushing alternating current.

722
00:44:38,520 --> 00:44:41,360
Speaker 1: The company that was really pushing direct current was General Electric.

723
00:44:42,200 --> 00:44:48,000
Speaker 1: So Westinghouse said, hey, sixty hurts. That frequency works best

724
00:44:48,080 --> 00:44:51,640
Speaker 1: with the lamps that we're producing today. If we do

725
00:44:51,800 --> 00:44:55,760
Speaker 1: a different frequency, the lamps tend to flicker. To get nice,

726
00:44:55,920 --> 00:44:59,920
Speaker 1: steady light, we needed an alternating current of sixty hurts.

727
00:45:00,480 --> 00:45:03,000
Speaker 1: If you went with fifty or twenty five, which were

728
00:45:03,040 --> 00:45:07,480
Speaker 1: other rates that people were considering, the lamps would flicker.

729
00:45:08,040 --> 00:45:11,080
Speaker 1: So sixty hurts was arrived at as the standard here

730
00:45:11,080 --> 00:45:13,400
Speaker 1: in the United States. Over in Europe it was fifty hurts,

731
00:45:14,320 --> 00:45:17,279
Speaker 1: largely because of monopolies that were rising up in the

732
00:45:17,320 --> 00:45:21,200
Speaker 1: electrical utility industry. But if you want to connect to

733
00:45:21,480 --> 00:45:26,839
Speaker 1: alternating current power systems together, you need to have there too. Uh,

734
00:45:28,120 --> 00:45:31,920
Speaker 1: there're two frequencies SYNCD up. So if you think of

735
00:45:31,960 --> 00:45:36,120
Speaker 1: this as two different cables, which is drastically oversimplifying things,

736
00:45:36,120 --> 00:45:38,240
Speaker 1: but think of it as two different cables, you would

737
00:45:38,239 --> 00:45:40,640
Speaker 1: want the signals to be moving left to right in

738
00:45:40,760 --> 00:45:44,200
Speaker 1: perfect synchronization. If they were out of phase with one another,

739
00:45:44,640 --> 00:45:48,919
Speaker 1: you couldn't really transmit power. But using high voltage DC,

740
00:45:49,360 --> 00:45:53,000
Speaker 1: you could convert alternating current from one system into direct current,

741
00:45:53,520 --> 00:45:58,440
Speaker 1: send the electricity via direct current to the secondary power grid,

742
00:45:58,440 --> 00:46:01,400
Speaker 1: where it would then be converted back into alternating current

743
00:46:01,520 --> 00:46:04,719
Speaker 1: in sync with the second power grid. So you can

744
00:46:04,719 --> 00:46:07,320
Speaker 1: have two alternating current power grids that are out of

745
00:46:07,360 --> 00:46:10,000
Speaker 1: sync with each other, link them with a direct current

746
00:46:11,239 --> 00:46:14,720
Speaker 1: connection and allow them to share power. This is important

747
00:46:14,760 --> 00:46:18,120
Speaker 1: when you start having massive power grids that need to

748
00:46:18,160 --> 00:46:20,560
Speaker 1: connect with one another. Otherwise you have a bunch of

749
00:46:20,800 --> 00:46:24,160
Speaker 1: power grids that are acting like independent little island nations

750
00:46:24,880 --> 00:46:31,440
Speaker 1: instead of an interconnected system. So, uh, direct current definitely

751
00:46:31,440 --> 00:46:35,600
Speaker 1: has its place even today, even though alternating current one

752
00:46:35,680 --> 00:46:39,279
Speaker 1: out um And I think it's kind of cool that

753
00:46:39,360 --> 00:46:41,640
Speaker 1: it ultimately comes down to the reason we have a

754
00:46:41,680 --> 00:46:45,160
Speaker 1: sixty hurts standard here in the United States because Westinghouse

755
00:46:45,200 --> 00:46:48,799
Speaker 1: wanted the lamps to be nice and steady. But it

756
00:46:48,800 --> 00:46:50,719
Speaker 1: took a long time for all of that to shake out.

757
00:46:50,760 --> 00:46:53,680
Speaker 1: It's not like we just immediately switched over to alternating current.

758
00:46:53,760 --> 00:46:56,360
Speaker 1: Like people didn't just look at the two different standards

759
00:46:56,360 --> 00:47:00,839
Speaker 1: and say alternating current is clearly superior. It was a

760
00:47:00,920 --> 00:47:07,360
Speaker 1: long battle, publicly fought with press releases and and press stunts.

761
00:47:07,480 --> 00:47:10,960
Speaker 1: Media stunts were performed by both sides. You probably have

762
00:47:11,040 --> 00:47:13,920
Speaker 1: heard the story of Topsy, the elephant that was electrocuted

763
00:47:13,960 --> 00:47:16,880
Speaker 1: to death with alternating current to show the dangers of

764
00:47:16,960 --> 00:47:20,960
Speaker 1: high voltage high voltage alternating current killing an elephant was

765
00:47:21,800 --> 00:47:27,600
Speaker 1: meant to show, hey, this, this type of electricity is dangerous.

766
00:47:27,800 --> 00:47:31,040
Speaker 1: You could die as a result of it, and people

767
00:47:31,080 --> 00:47:34,440
Speaker 1: did die as they were working on things like transformers.

768
00:47:36,040 --> 00:47:42,080
Speaker 1: So neither side was shying away from publicly addressing the

769
00:47:42,120 --> 00:47:45,440
Speaker 1: benefits of their own method while saying the other method,

770
00:47:45,680 --> 00:47:49,080
Speaker 1: whether it was direct current or alternating current, was quite

771
00:47:49,120 --> 00:47:51,640
Speaker 1: literally the worst thing to ever happen to human beings

772
00:47:51,640 --> 00:47:54,240
Speaker 1: in the history forever. At least that's how it seemed

773
00:47:54,280 --> 00:48:01,040
Speaker 1: like during these, uh these press events. Now, some early

774
00:48:01,120 --> 00:48:04,759
Speaker 1: victories gave alternating current a real advantage, and the first

775
00:48:04,800 --> 00:48:09,319
Speaker 1: of those probably was the Chicago World's Fair in eight three.

776
00:48:10,480 --> 00:48:12,880
Speaker 1: And this was a really big deal. The World's Fair

777
00:48:13,360 --> 00:48:15,880
Speaker 1: was falling on the same year as the four hundredth

778
00:48:15,960 --> 00:48:19,360
Speaker 1: anniversary of Columbus arriving in the New World, which in

779
00:48:19,400 --> 00:48:22,720
Speaker 1: the United States was seen as a really important milestone.

780
00:48:23,400 --> 00:48:26,239
Speaker 1: I'm not going to dive into the historical boondoggle that

781
00:48:26,440 --> 00:48:30,239
Speaker 1: was the Columbus expeditions. Other than to say, there are

782
00:48:30,280 --> 00:48:33,440
Speaker 1: better heroes to hold up than Christopher Columbus not a

783
00:48:33,480 --> 00:48:38,160
Speaker 1: great hero, as it turns out, unless you are uh,

784
00:48:38,280 --> 00:48:43,800
Speaker 1: completely ignoring the plights of people that Columbus also completely ignored.

785
00:48:44,000 --> 00:48:46,160
Speaker 1: I recommend you do not do that, because it's a

786
00:48:46,280 --> 00:48:49,160
Speaker 1: terrible thing to do. But it was seen at the

787
00:48:49,200 --> 00:48:51,240
Speaker 1: time as a really big deal for the United States

788
00:48:51,280 --> 00:48:54,839
Speaker 1: to celebrate this four hundredth anniversary, and the World's Fair

789
00:48:54,920 --> 00:48:57,239
Speaker 1: was an opportunity for the United States to show off

790
00:48:57,280 --> 00:49:00,840
Speaker 1: the direction of the country, and so for much of

791
00:49:00,840 --> 00:49:04,200
Speaker 1: the expedition um or exhibition i should say, rather or

792
00:49:04,239 --> 00:49:08,680
Speaker 1: not expedition. Much of the exhibition was dedicated to showing

793
00:49:08,680 --> 00:49:10,680
Speaker 1: off what the future of the United States was going

794
00:49:10,719 --> 00:49:13,480
Speaker 1: to be about, and that included future technologies and the

795
00:49:13,560 --> 00:49:16,000
Speaker 1: use of electricity, which at that point was still pretty

796
00:49:16,080 --> 00:49:19,040
Speaker 1: limited in the US. Only a few places were using it.

797
00:49:19,400 --> 00:49:21,960
Speaker 1: But this was seen as the stuff of the future.

798
00:49:22,680 --> 00:49:24,360
Speaker 1: So the fair was going to be lit up at

799
00:49:24,440 --> 00:49:27,440
Speaker 1: night by electric lamps rather than gas lamps. But how

800
00:49:27,520 --> 00:49:30,719
Speaker 1: would the power be delivered to the fair? We'll tell

801
00:49:30,760 --> 00:49:33,839
Speaker 1: that story in just a second. But first, let's take

802
00:49:33,880 --> 00:49:43,319
Speaker 1: another quick break to thank our sponsor. All right, So

803
00:49:43,400 --> 00:49:48,040
Speaker 1: you have Edison working along with General Electric with the

804
00:49:48,040 --> 00:49:52,040
Speaker 1: backing of JP Morgan, and that's one of the different

805
00:49:52,080 --> 00:49:55,120
Speaker 1: parties that are really pushing to be the deliverer of

806
00:49:55,160 --> 00:49:59,080
Speaker 1: electricity to the Chicago World's Fair, UH, and they're pushing

807
00:49:59,200 --> 00:50:03,240
Speaker 1: direct current. They're all about d C. Then you have Westinghouse,

808
00:50:03,320 --> 00:50:07,000
Speaker 1: George Westinghouse's company, and by extension, you have Nicola Tesla

809
00:50:07,040 --> 00:50:10,360
Speaker 1: who was working with Westinghouse as the other major party,

810
00:50:10,440 --> 00:50:15,160
Speaker 1: and they're pushing alternating current. Now, the General Electric Company

811
00:50:16,400 --> 00:50:20,560
Speaker 1: asked for one point eight million dollars to light the fair.

812
00:50:20,760 --> 00:50:23,759
Speaker 1: That was their bill. That's what they said to the organizers.

813
00:50:23,760 --> 00:50:27,080
Speaker 1: They said, we we can provide the electricity you need

814
00:50:27,400 --> 00:50:30,359
Speaker 1: to turn this into a sparkling wonderland and it will

815
00:50:30,400 --> 00:50:33,480
Speaker 1: only cost you, um easily one point eight million dollars.

816
00:50:33,960 --> 00:50:38,640
Speaker 1: The fair organizers said, no, that's a that's like a

817
00:50:38,680 --> 00:50:42,239
Speaker 1: lot of money, and we'd rather not spend one point

818
00:50:42,320 --> 00:50:48,120
Speaker 1: eight million dollars, And so the offer was rejected. The

819
00:50:48,160 --> 00:50:52,080
Speaker 1: two of them, Edison and UH JP Morgan, went back

820
00:50:52,120 --> 00:50:55,240
Speaker 1: to the drawing board decided they would make a second offer.

821
00:50:55,400 --> 00:50:57,560
Speaker 1: A lower offer and said, oh, you know what, we

822
00:50:57,560 --> 00:51:00,840
Speaker 1: could probably do it for five fifty four thousand dollars,

823
00:51:00,880 --> 00:51:03,480
Speaker 1: so less than half of what we asked for before.

824
00:51:03,560 --> 00:51:06,000
Speaker 1: We all us for nearly two million earlier, but we

825
00:51:06,040 --> 00:51:10,000
Speaker 1: think we can get down to five thousand dollars. However,

826
00:51:11,200 --> 00:51:14,239
Speaker 1: Westinghouse undercut that offer with a proposal to light the

827
00:51:14,280 --> 00:51:18,320
Speaker 1: fair for the princely sum of three hundred nine thousand

828
00:51:18,400 --> 00:51:22,919
Speaker 1: dollars using alternating current instead of direct current, and that's

829
00:51:22,960 --> 00:51:27,480
Speaker 1: what the fair organizers want to hear. Three dollars is

830
00:51:27,480 --> 00:51:30,960
Speaker 1: still significantly less than five four thousand dollars. So the

831
00:51:30,960 --> 00:51:35,200
Speaker 1: fair organizers said, Westinghouse, you get the contract. And it

832
00:51:35,280 --> 00:51:37,600
Speaker 1: all really came down to a price tag when you

833
00:51:37,640 --> 00:51:39,880
Speaker 1: get down to it. It wasn't that they were specifically

834
00:51:39,920 --> 00:51:43,440
Speaker 1: saying alternating current is superior to direct current. That's not

835
00:51:43,480 --> 00:51:46,280
Speaker 1: what the World's Fair organizers were really saying. They were saying,

836
00:51:47,000 --> 00:51:50,480
Speaker 1: we can afford alternating current, and direct current is prohibitively

837
00:51:50,560 --> 00:51:55,279
Speaker 1: expensive for this project. So alternating current got the deal.

838
00:51:55,400 --> 00:51:57,759
Speaker 1: And because the Chicago World's Fair was such a big

839
00:51:57,800 --> 00:52:02,200
Speaker 1: deal in world's attention was on Chicago at the time,

840
00:52:02,960 --> 00:52:07,239
Speaker 1: the display of the fair lit up at Night was

841
00:52:07,680 --> 00:52:12,000
Speaker 1: incredibly impressive and powerful, and it was a great advertising

842
00:52:12,040 --> 00:52:16,480
Speaker 1: campaign for Westinghouse and alternating current, honestly because it was

843
00:52:16,520 --> 00:52:19,560
Speaker 1: such an effective display of what alternating current could do.

844
00:52:20,320 --> 00:52:24,120
Speaker 1: A lot of different cities and companies were interested in

845
00:52:24,200 --> 00:52:29,680
Speaker 1: pursuing getting their various areas wired for electricity using alternating current.

846
00:52:31,400 --> 00:52:36,040
Speaker 1: In Westinghouse one another important battle in the US by

847
00:52:36,120 --> 00:52:40,000
Speaker 1: landing a contract for the Niagara Falls Power Station. The

848
00:52:40,080 --> 00:52:43,560
Speaker 1: generator would be an alternating current system instead of direct current.

849
00:52:43,719 --> 00:52:46,279
Speaker 1: Edison in General Electric had pursued this as well, but

850
00:52:46,360 --> 00:52:49,160
Speaker 1: they failed. And here's where it comes in handy to

851
00:52:49,160 --> 00:52:52,759
Speaker 1: talk about how these generators tend to work. And you've

852
00:52:52,800 --> 00:52:56,080
Speaker 1: got a lot of different ways of generating electricity, right

853
00:52:56,360 --> 00:52:59,840
Speaker 1: like you've got hydro power, you've got wind power, you

854
00:53:00,040 --> 00:53:04,319
Speaker 1: got coal power, you've got nuclear power. Now they all

855
00:53:04,440 --> 00:53:07,920
Speaker 1: ultimately work on a very similar principle. All of those

856
00:53:08,400 --> 00:53:11,680
Speaker 1: tend to work the same way ultimately when you get

857
00:53:11,680 --> 00:53:15,879
Speaker 1: down to the very basics of what is happening, and

858
00:53:15,920 --> 00:53:19,400
Speaker 1: that is they all involve some sort of mechanical system

859
00:53:19,440 --> 00:53:25,359
Speaker 1: where a conductor is moving through a magnetic field so

860
00:53:25,400 --> 00:53:28,960
Speaker 1: that it's it's experiencing magnetic flux and generating a current

861
00:53:29,680 --> 00:53:33,080
Speaker 1: or current is induced to flow through the conductor, is

862
00:53:33,080 --> 00:53:35,560
Speaker 1: a better way of putting it. In other words, these

863
00:53:35,560 --> 00:53:39,440
Speaker 1: are all very large systems that are following those same

864
00:53:39,480 --> 00:53:43,319
Speaker 1: basic experiments that were happening at the beginning of the

865
00:53:43,400 --> 00:53:47,440
Speaker 1: nineteenth century when people were just starting to move conductors,

866
00:53:47,440 --> 00:53:50,719
Speaker 1: When Faraday was moving a conductive disc through a magnetic

867
00:53:50,760 --> 00:53:53,480
Speaker 1: field and observing the fact that electric current was flowing

868
00:53:53,480 --> 00:53:56,920
Speaker 1: through the disc. That's what all these systems ultimately do.

869
00:53:57,160 --> 00:54:00,719
Speaker 1: It's just on a much, much, much larger scale. It's

870
00:54:00,760 --> 00:54:05,480
Speaker 1: nothing as modest as the fairy Day's approach. Now, with

871
00:54:05,560 --> 00:54:08,960
Speaker 1: a coal or a nuclear power plant, you're using heat

872
00:54:09,400 --> 00:54:13,280
Speaker 1: to convert water into steam. So you've got a boiler essentially,

873
00:54:13,680 --> 00:54:17,080
Speaker 1: and the boilers filled with water, and the heat is

874
00:54:17,120 --> 00:54:20,840
Speaker 1: provided either through nuclear radiation or through a coal furnace,

875
00:54:21,239 --> 00:54:24,120
Speaker 1: so you're burning coal. Essentially, the heat up water, convert

876
00:54:24,160 --> 00:54:28,120
Speaker 1: the water to steam. The steam then turns a turbine,

877
00:54:28,520 --> 00:54:30,680
Speaker 1: and the turbine is connected to a system that moves

878
00:54:30,719 --> 00:54:34,600
Speaker 1: the combination of magnets and conductors so that you generate

879
00:54:34,680 --> 00:54:38,840
Speaker 1: the alternating current. Now, with coal plants, the heat is

880
00:54:38,880 --> 00:54:41,839
Speaker 1: coming from that massive furnace and you're burning coal, so

881
00:54:41,880 --> 00:54:44,759
Speaker 1: obviously there's a downside here. You're emitting a lot of

882
00:54:44,800 --> 00:54:50,520
Speaker 1: greenhouse gases, namely carbon dioxide. So it's a very powerful

883
00:54:50,560 --> 00:54:54,760
Speaker 1: way to generate electricity, but it it's very it creates

884
00:54:54,800 --> 00:54:57,359
Speaker 1: a lot of pollution as a result, which is why

885
00:54:57,600 --> 00:55:01,560
Speaker 1: when people talk about electricity being cleaner than fossil fuels,

886
00:55:03,160 --> 00:55:05,120
Speaker 1: it really just it just means that you have to

887
00:55:05,160 --> 00:55:07,799
Speaker 1: look a step further, where is the electricity coming from.

888
00:55:07,840 --> 00:55:10,200
Speaker 1: If the electricity is coming from a coal power plant,

889
00:55:10,320 --> 00:55:12,239
Speaker 1: you still have a problem there because you have the

890
00:55:12,280 --> 00:55:16,080
Speaker 1: power plant emitting carbon into the atmosphere as well as

891
00:55:16,080 --> 00:55:20,799
Speaker 1: other greenhouse gases and other types of pollution. So even

892
00:55:20,800 --> 00:55:26,319
Speaker 1: though the electric utensil, or vehicle or whatever itself may

893
00:55:26,320 --> 00:55:31,640
Speaker 1: not emit any carbon emissions, the source of its electricity

894
00:55:31,760 --> 00:55:36,719
Speaker 1: might be emitting a lot of carbon emissions. So coal

895
00:55:36,800 --> 00:55:40,200
Speaker 1: power plants are not clean right. You're not getting clean

896
00:55:40,239 --> 00:55:44,120
Speaker 1: electricity that way. Nuclear power plants also have a problem

897
00:55:44,280 --> 00:55:47,120
Speaker 1: with generating nuclear waste. Now we're getting better and better

898
00:55:47,160 --> 00:55:52,680
Speaker 1: about finding ways to maximize nuclear material and minimize nuclear

899
00:55:52,719 --> 00:55:54,920
Speaker 1: waste so that that doesn't become as big an issue

900
00:55:55,040 --> 00:55:58,479
Speaker 1: as was feared. Because, of course, the worry is where

901
00:55:58,480 --> 00:56:01,719
Speaker 1: do you put the nuclear waste which will maintain a

902
00:56:02,000 --> 00:56:07,720
Speaker 1: nuclear dangerous level of nuclear radiation thousands of years after

903
00:56:08,080 --> 00:56:10,480
Speaker 1: you gather it. How do you where do you put

904
00:56:10,520 --> 00:56:13,399
Speaker 1: that stuff? And no one wants it near them, right,

905
00:56:13,480 --> 00:56:18,080
Speaker 1: You don't want to have a nuclear waste holding facility

906
00:56:18,120 --> 00:56:20,480
Speaker 1: anywhere close to where you live. It's a scary thought.

907
00:56:21,160 --> 00:56:23,440
Speaker 1: But nuclear power plants to a very similar thing to

908
00:56:23,560 --> 00:56:27,360
Speaker 1: carbon coal power plants, and that you use nuclear radiation

909
00:56:27,440 --> 00:56:30,480
Speaker 1: to heat water converted into steam and turn a turbine.

910
00:56:30,560 --> 00:56:33,920
Speaker 1: Both in coal plants and in nuclear power plants, the

911
00:56:33,960 --> 00:56:36,760
Speaker 1: goal is to create essentially a closed system for the water,

912
00:56:37,400 --> 00:56:41,920
Speaker 1: so the water evaporates, turns into steam, turns the turbine.

913
00:56:41,960 --> 00:56:45,719
Speaker 1: Once the pressure builds up, turbine ends up generating electricity.

914
00:56:45,920 --> 00:56:49,000
Speaker 1: The steam continues through the system until it starts to

915
00:56:49,040 --> 00:56:52,800
Speaker 1: cool down, condense back into water, and go back into

916
00:56:52,920 --> 00:56:55,600
Speaker 1: the boiler tank so that it can be turned into

917
00:56:55,640 --> 00:56:57,680
Speaker 1: steam again. That way, you can just keep using that

918
00:56:57,800 --> 00:57:01,640
Speaker 1: same water over and over again and is separated from

919
00:57:01,719 --> 00:57:04,439
Speaker 1: the source of heat, so you're not getting pollution from

920
00:57:04,480 --> 00:57:07,399
Speaker 1: the coal furnace or rate, or you're not getting any

921
00:57:07,480 --> 00:57:12,759
Speaker 1: radioactive material from the the new source of nuclear radiation.

922
00:57:13,120 --> 00:57:16,400
Speaker 1: The two are separate systems. It's just that the water

923
00:57:16,520 --> 00:57:19,160
Speaker 1: in one system is heated by the output of the

924
00:57:19,200 --> 00:57:23,320
Speaker 1: other system. UH. Very clever design because it means that

925
00:57:23,360 --> 00:57:27,600
Speaker 1: you're not having to constantly replenish the water in your

926
00:57:28,560 --> 00:57:30,760
Speaker 1: UH in your closed system. You do have to occasionally

927
00:57:30,800 --> 00:57:33,520
Speaker 1: do it because you're no system is completely perfect. You're

928
00:57:33,560 --> 00:57:36,200
Speaker 1: gonna have some sort of loss somewhere on there, so

929
00:57:36,280 --> 00:57:39,280
Speaker 1: you do have to top it off occasionally. But keeping

930
00:57:39,280 --> 00:57:44,920
Speaker 1: them separate limits the amount of pollution that you have. UH.

931
00:57:45,280 --> 00:57:48,040
Speaker 1: That being said, you know, there are alternatives to coal

932
00:57:48,120 --> 00:57:52,160
Speaker 1: plants and nuclear power plants that don't emit any carbon

933
00:57:52,600 --> 00:57:56,919
Speaker 1: radiation or a carbon pollution or any radioactive material either.

934
00:57:57,520 --> 00:58:00,280
Speaker 1: So hydropower is a great example of that. When power

935
00:58:00,360 --> 00:58:02,960
Speaker 1: also they eliminate the need to heat up water entirely.

936
00:58:02,960 --> 00:58:06,240
Speaker 1: But you're still talking about the mechanical energy of turning

937
00:58:06,600 --> 00:58:10,120
Speaker 1: one of these generators so that it induces electricity to

938
00:58:10,320 --> 00:58:14,280
Speaker 1: flow through a conductor. So with hydropower, you engineer a

939
00:58:14,320 --> 00:58:17,320
Speaker 1: system in which water turns the turbine as it typically

940
00:58:17,360 --> 00:58:20,240
Speaker 1: moves from an area of higher elevation to lower elevation.

941
00:58:20,880 --> 00:58:23,760
Speaker 1: Hydropower dams do this. So if you've ever seen a

942
00:58:23,800 --> 00:58:27,480
Speaker 1: hydropower dam where there's this enormous dam stretching across the

943
00:58:27,520 --> 00:58:30,480
Speaker 1: body of water, and you see water pouring out of

944
00:58:30,560 --> 00:58:33,400
Speaker 1: the base of the dam from the higher section into

945
00:58:33,480 --> 00:58:36,680
Speaker 1: the lower section. So it's it's just shooting out of

946
00:58:36,720 --> 00:58:41,480
Speaker 1: that lower area. That's where the water is turning turbines,

947
00:58:41,880 --> 00:58:45,840
Speaker 1: So you've got turbines inside the dam. Water pressure on

948
00:58:45,880 --> 00:58:48,840
Speaker 1: the back end of the dam is forcing water through

949
00:58:48,920 --> 00:58:52,320
Speaker 1: some channels. Those channels have the turbines in them. The

950
00:58:52,360 --> 00:58:55,160
Speaker 1: force of the water hitting the turbines turns the turbines.

951
00:58:55,240 --> 00:58:58,040
Speaker 1: The water continues on and pours out the other side. Meanwhile,

952
00:58:58,320 --> 00:59:04,480
Speaker 1: you generate electricity um wind power. Same thing, except you're

953
00:59:04,560 --> 00:59:08,280
Speaker 1: using wind to turn turbines that have blades on them.

954
00:59:08,320 --> 00:59:11,840
Speaker 1: So wind blows the blades. This causes rotational force with

955
00:59:11,920 --> 00:59:15,680
Speaker 1: the turbines, which then ends up turning a generator, just

956
00:59:15,720 --> 00:59:18,640
Speaker 1: as we've talked about before, and again inducing electricity to

957
00:59:18,680 --> 00:59:23,800
Speaker 1: flow by creating a difference in voltage. Solar power is

958
00:59:23,840 --> 00:59:27,800
Speaker 1: different uh or at least it tends to be different. Typically,

959
00:59:27,840 --> 00:59:31,840
Speaker 1: it relies on converting energy from photons striking photo cells

960
00:59:32,240 --> 00:59:35,680
Speaker 1: into electricity, so it is a different means of generating

961
00:59:35,720 --> 00:59:38,640
Speaker 1: electricity than these other methods. But there are also some

962
00:59:38,680 --> 00:59:42,520
Speaker 1: systems that use solar energy to heat water, for example,

963
00:59:42,720 --> 00:59:46,160
Speaker 1: or some other liquid to turn it into steam and

964
00:59:46,200 --> 00:59:50,200
Speaker 1: turn turbines. So this would make it more like coal

965
00:59:50,280 --> 00:59:52,880
Speaker 1: plants or nuclear power plants, except of course you're talking

966
00:59:52,920 --> 00:59:56,080
Speaker 1: about sunlight and water, so you're not emitting any uh

967
00:59:56,480 --> 00:59:59,960
Speaker 1: greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide. You could emit water vapor

968
01:00:00,040 --> 01:00:02,000
Speaker 1: if it's not a closed system, and water vapor is

969
01:00:02,080 --> 01:00:04,919
Speaker 1: technically a greenhouse gas. It just doesn't last very long

970
01:00:04,920 --> 01:00:09,880
Speaker 1: in the environment, but it is a very um effective

971
01:00:09,920 --> 01:00:13,800
Speaker 1: greenhouse gas for its lifespan. It doesn't last very long

972
01:00:13,880 --> 01:00:17,680
Speaker 1: in the environment, but it is a very absorbed, absorptive

973
01:00:18,520 --> 01:00:21,960
Speaker 1: greenhouse gas. All right, back to the drama of the

974
01:00:22,000 --> 01:00:25,000
Speaker 1: current war, so you had Westinghouse in general Electric battling

975
01:00:25,000 --> 01:00:28,600
Speaker 1: it out big time. GE had some good points. Most

976
01:00:28,600 --> 01:00:31,600
Speaker 1: of our electronics that we plug into sockets run direct current,

977
01:00:31,680 --> 01:00:34,400
Speaker 1: which means if you want to use alternating current to

978
01:00:34,480 --> 01:00:36,840
Speaker 1: get the electricity to those devices, you then have to

979
01:00:36,840 --> 01:00:39,840
Speaker 1: convert a C into d C for it to actually

980
01:00:39,880 --> 01:00:42,720
Speaker 1: work in the thing that you're using. So like a

981
01:00:42,760 --> 01:00:46,080
Speaker 1: refrigerator for example. I mean that's a modern example, but

982
01:00:46,120 --> 01:00:48,600
Speaker 1: a refrigerator, you need it to convert a C to

983
01:00:48,760 --> 01:00:52,280
Speaker 1: d C to run the technology of a refrigerator. So

984
01:00:52,320 --> 01:00:56,000
Speaker 1: if you had DC generation and DC transmission, you didn't

985
01:00:56,040 --> 01:00:57,480
Speaker 1: have to You wouldn't have to you wouldn't have to

986
01:00:57,520 --> 01:01:00,240
Speaker 1: convert anything. It would cut down on the elements would

987
01:01:00,240 --> 01:01:03,960
Speaker 1: need inside the materials themselves. However, you still had the

988
01:01:04,000 --> 01:01:07,000
Speaker 1: issue of how do you transmit the power from the

989
01:01:07,040 --> 01:01:10,160
Speaker 1: generating station to where it needs to go, And before

990
01:01:10,200 --> 01:01:12,720
Speaker 1: the era of high voltage DC, there wasn't really an

991
01:01:12,720 --> 01:01:18,720
Speaker 1: answer to that question. Um So Edison and Westinghouse were

992
01:01:18,760 --> 01:01:22,280
Speaker 1: both making some decisions around this time that were rubbing

993
01:01:22,320 --> 01:01:26,880
Speaker 1: people the wrong way. Tesla originally worked for Edison. He

994
01:01:26,960 --> 01:01:29,400
Speaker 1: worked for Edison in Europe for a while, then he

995
01:01:29,440 --> 01:01:32,320
Speaker 1: moved to New York and worked with Edison for a

996
01:01:32,320 --> 01:01:35,280
Speaker 1: while as a contractor, but they had a falling out

997
01:01:35,800 --> 01:01:40,320
Speaker 1: and then Tesla would end up working over with Westinghouse. However,

998
01:01:40,400 --> 01:01:44,120
Speaker 1: even at Westinghouse, Tesla found it frustrating. So one of

999
01:01:44,120 --> 01:01:47,040
Speaker 1: the problems was Tesla was not very ferocious when it

1000
01:01:47,080 --> 01:01:49,720
Speaker 1: came to protecting his work, and he had really little

1001
01:01:49,880 --> 01:01:53,080
Speaker 1: interest in asserting his authority and demanding what he was

1002
01:01:53,160 --> 01:01:57,320
Speaker 1: worth and protecting his intellectual property and his patents, and

1003
01:01:57,320 --> 01:02:00,800
Speaker 1: if you don't protect patents, people can all call over you.

1004
01:02:01,160 --> 01:02:04,680
Speaker 1: Tesla believed that he shouldn't have to protect his stuff

1005
01:02:04,760 --> 01:02:08,520
Speaker 1: because it was clearly his and people should just behave better.

1006
01:02:08,840 --> 01:02:11,760
Speaker 1: But in the world we live in sometimes that's not enough,

1007
01:02:11,840 --> 01:02:15,560
Speaker 1: and some people were walking all over him. Uh. He

1008
01:02:15,600 --> 01:02:18,880
Speaker 1: would eventually see his finances drain away over time, so

1009
01:02:18,960 --> 01:02:22,360
Speaker 1: as he got older, he became more destitute. He was

1010
01:02:22,520 --> 01:02:26,680
Speaker 1: living for free in various hotels, and typically hotel would

1011
01:02:26,680 --> 01:02:29,080
Speaker 1: eventually get fed up with Tesla and a victim, and

1012
01:02:29,120 --> 01:02:32,720
Speaker 1: he would just essentially move further down the street and

1013
01:02:32,760 --> 01:02:34,920
Speaker 1: find another hotel that would be thrilled to have the

1014
01:02:34,920 --> 01:02:38,680
Speaker 1: brilliant Nicola Tesla because they thought of it as something

1015
01:02:38,720 --> 01:02:41,480
Speaker 1: that would elevate the hotel and attract more people to

1016
01:02:41,520 --> 01:02:44,800
Speaker 1: their hotel. If Nicola Tesla stays at their hotel, then

1017
01:02:44,800 --> 01:02:48,000
Speaker 1: obviously it's got to be a really awesome place. That

1018
01:02:48,120 --> 01:02:51,440
Speaker 1: was kind of the the approach. It's actually pretty sad

1019
01:02:52,120 --> 01:02:54,360
Speaker 1: towards the end of his life, and I've talked about

1020
01:02:54,400 --> 01:02:56,080
Speaker 1: in other episodes of Tech stuff. So I'm not gonna

1021
01:02:56,120 --> 01:02:58,560
Speaker 1: dwell on it here, but just to say that that

1022
01:02:59,360 --> 01:03:02,320
Speaker 1: the end of his I was a little tragic. Then

1023
01:03:02,360 --> 01:03:04,880
Speaker 1: there was William Stanley. That was the guy who made

1024
01:03:04,920 --> 01:03:09,000
Speaker 1: the first commercially viable transformer, the technology that Tesla would

1025
01:03:09,640 --> 01:03:14,320
Speaker 1: improve over time. Stanley also worked for Westinghouse, but Stanley

1026
01:03:14,360 --> 01:03:18,720
Speaker 1: and George Westinghouse had a fundamental disagreement about money. The

1027
01:03:18,760 --> 01:03:21,240
Speaker 1: disagreement was that Stanley felt he was owed money and

1028
01:03:21,400 --> 01:03:28,520
Speaker 1: Westinghouse said no. So Westinghouse's lawyer, Franklin Pope, actually urged

1029
01:03:28,640 --> 01:03:34,000
Speaker 1: George Westinghouse to drop Stanley's business entirely. That same lawyer,

1030
01:03:34,680 --> 01:03:39,680
Speaker 1: Franklin Pope, would later die in a terrible accident. He

1031
01:03:39,760 --> 01:03:45,200
Speaker 1: was checking on one of Stanley's transformers and was fatally electrocuted.

1032
01:03:45,560 --> 01:03:49,000
Speaker 1: That's redundant. Electrocuted is fatal. A lot of people use

1033
01:03:49,040 --> 01:03:51,680
Speaker 1: electrocute to mean you got shocked, but electrocute means you

1034
01:03:51,720 --> 01:03:54,840
Speaker 1: were You died as a result of electricity flowing through you.

1035
01:03:55,440 --> 01:03:59,840
Speaker 1: So yeah, that was some pretty nasty irony there that

1036
01:04:00,120 --> 01:04:03,800
Speaker 1: the lawyer who advised Westinghouse to get rid of William

1037
01:04:03,880 --> 01:04:09,040
Speaker 1: Stanley would ultimately die by being electrocuted by one of

1038
01:04:09,080 --> 01:04:14,240
Speaker 1: Stanley's transformers. Stanley himself set out to found his own company.

1039
01:04:14,640 --> 01:04:17,600
Speaker 1: He was hoping to rival General Electric and Westinghouse. He

1040
01:04:17,680 --> 01:04:21,040
Speaker 1: was hoping to become the third big player in that

1041
01:04:21,120 --> 01:04:24,360
Speaker 1: space in the United States. But he found it really

1042
01:04:24,360 --> 01:04:27,200
Speaker 1: frustrating because he had to constantly go to court to

1043
01:04:27,360 --> 01:04:30,240
Speaker 1: fight for his patents. He was kind of the opposite

1044
01:04:30,280 --> 01:04:33,760
Speaker 1: of Tesla. Whereas Tesla was sort of lackadaisical in protecting

1045
01:04:33,760 --> 01:04:37,280
Speaker 1: his intellectual property, Stanley was fierce, but he had to

1046
01:04:37,360 --> 01:04:39,360
Speaker 1: keep doing it over and over again. It's not like

1047
01:04:39,440 --> 01:04:42,120
Speaker 1: you can protect it once and you're fine. Every time

1048
01:04:42,320 --> 01:04:44,000
Speaker 1: there was a threat, he would have to go to court,

1049
01:04:44,360 --> 01:04:46,560
Speaker 1: and this really started to wear on him so much

1050
01:04:46,640 --> 01:04:49,680
Speaker 1: so that he didn't He wasn't able to keep control

1051
01:04:49,680 --> 01:04:51,840
Speaker 1: of his own company. It was kind of rested away

1052
01:04:51,880 --> 01:04:56,400
Speaker 1: from him. Eventually, Stanley's company would get swallowed up by

1053
01:04:56,440 --> 01:05:01,240
Speaker 1: General Electric. So he had worked for Westinghouse, left Westinghouse

1054
01:05:01,440 --> 01:05:04,800
Speaker 1: on bad terms, founded his own company, and then that

1055
01:05:04,840 --> 01:05:08,720
Speaker 1: company would get acquired by Westinghouse as big competitor. General Electric.

1056
01:05:09,160 --> 01:05:14,680
Speaker 1: Kind of ugly there too. He would ultimately decide to

1057
01:05:14,680 --> 01:05:19,240
Speaker 1: focus on other things besides electricity. He got completely disillusioned

1058
01:05:19,520 --> 01:05:22,840
Speaker 1: by all the politics and backstabbing, and so he started

1059
01:05:22,880 --> 01:05:25,120
Speaker 1: to go and work on other things. He eventually invented

1060
01:05:25,160 --> 01:05:28,640
Speaker 1: an improved thermis, for example. So he kept on working

1061
01:05:28,680 --> 01:05:30,840
Speaker 1: on things till the end of his life. But he

1062
01:05:30,960 --> 01:05:35,840
Speaker 1: wasn't he wasn't eager to work in electricity anymore. Edison

1063
01:05:35,960 --> 01:05:40,240
Speaker 1: himself became sort of a victim of his own success.

1064
01:05:40,280 --> 01:05:43,920
Speaker 1: So he built this laboratory in Menlo Park, and it

1065
01:05:44,040 --> 01:05:46,920
Speaker 1: was a place of great innovation, some of it driven

1066
01:05:47,120 --> 01:05:50,000
Speaker 1: largely by Edison himself, some of it by his employees.

1067
01:05:50,320 --> 01:05:52,480
Speaker 1: But the reason they had a place to work was

1068
01:05:52,520 --> 01:05:56,000
Speaker 1: because Edison had created that place. So, whether you want

1069
01:05:56,000 --> 01:05:58,840
Speaker 1: to think of it as a direct responsibility or indirect

1070
01:05:58,880 --> 01:06:02,720
Speaker 1: responsibility at US and played an enormous role in those

1071
01:06:03,160 --> 01:06:08,720
Speaker 1: early years of electricity. Buzz Lab kept growing, and as

1072
01:06:08,760 --> 01:06:11,360
Speaker 1: it grew, it became more complicated and difficult to manage,

1073
01:06:11,360 --> 01:06:14,880
Speaker 1: and Edison missed it when it was tiny and more intimate.

1074
01:06:14,920 --> 01:06:19,680
Speaker 1: He didn't like corporate structures, he didn't like academic structures.

1075
01:06:19,680 --> 01:06:21,600
Speaker 1: So he was feeling more and more out of place

1076
01:06:21,640 --> 01:06:24,240
Speaker 1: in his own laboratory, and eventually he decided to move

1077
01:06:24,240 --> 01:06:27,240
Speaker 1: away from it. He became more of a business manager

1078
01:06:27,280 --> 01:06:30,680
Speaker 1: than an engineer or inventor. He did go on to

1079
01:06:30,720 --> 01:06:33,600
Speaker 1: work on other things. He eventually would develop a car

1080
01:06:33,640 --> 01:06:36,480
Speaker 1: battery for his buddy Henry Ford for the Model T.

1081
01:06:37,280 --> 01:06:38,960
Speaker 1: And I'm pretty sure at some point I need to

1082
01:06:39,000 --> 01:06:42,160
Speaker 1: do an episode specifically about Henry Ford. Maybe I'll get

1083
01:06:42,240 --> 01:06:45,560
Speaker 1: Scott to come on Scott from Car Stuff and we

1084
01:06:45,560 --> 01:06:47,360
Speaker 1: can talk about Henry Ford, because I think that would

1085
01:06:47,400 --> 01:06:49,880
Speaker 1: be a fascinating episode to to talk about the guy.

1086
01:06:50,440 --> 01:06:55,840
Speaker 1: Another irascible businessman, Edison himself would die at the age

1087
01:06:55,880 --> 01:06:59,280
Speaker 1: of eighty four due to complications with diabetes. He was

1088
01:06:59,360 --> 01:07:03,040
Speaker 1: known as a brilliant but really grouchy dude. It was

1089
01:07:03,160 --> 01:07:06,120
Speaker 1: standoffs even to his own family. But his work, whether

1090
01:07:06,200 --> 01:07:08,919
Speaker 1: directly on projects or as someone who provided a place

1091
01:07:08,960 --> 01:07:12,160
Speaker 1: for innovation to happen, helped shape our world. And that's

1092
01:07:12,200 --> 01:07:14,640
Speaker 1: pretty much where we're going to leave off. This was

1093
01:07:14,680 --> 01:07:17,560
Speaker 1: the era where more and more companies were starting to

1094
01:07:17,560 --> 01:07:21,360
Speaker 1: put up power grids. Cities would contract with Westinghouse and

1095
01:07:21,560 --> 01:07:25,360
Speaker 1: other companies to design power grids and to deliver electricity

1096
01:07:25,360 --> 01:07:28,200
Speaker 1: to homes. We started seeing electric lights get adopted pretty

1097
01:07:28,280 --> 01:07:32,360
Speaker 1: rapidly and replace gas lamps. From that point, forward and

1098
01:07:32,560 --> 01:07:36,440
Speaker 1: uh alternating current one out at least initially because it

1099
01:07:36,560 --> 01:07:41,000
Speaker 1: was easier to accomplish than high voltage direct current. Today,

1100
01:07:41,120 --> 01:07:44,000
Speaker 1: we could technically switch to high voltage direct current if

1101
01:07:44,040 --> 01:07:46,040
Speaker 1: we wanted to. We have the technology to do it.

1102
01:07:46,120 --> 01:07:51,440
Speaker 1: But again, we already have an existing infrastructure, so that's

1103
01:07:51,480 --> 01:07:55,400
Speaker 1: hard to just ignore. You've got billions of dollars invested

1104
01:07:55,480 --> 01:07:59,200
Speaker 1: in those infrastructures, and to just scrap them and start

1105
01:07:59,280 --> 01:08:02,760
Speaker 1: over would be an enormous and expensive undertaking, so it's

1106
01:08:02,800 --> 01:08:05,920
Speaker 1: not likely to ever happen now. Maybe in the future

1107
01:08:05,920 --> 01:08:08,400
Speaker 1: I'll do another episode where I will follow up on

1108
01:08:08,440 --> 01:08:09,919
Speaker 1: some of this and talk about some of the other

1109
01:08:09,960 --> 01:08:14,280
Speaker 1: things that are involved, like why are the voltages different

1110
01:08:14,360 --> 01:08:17,479
Speaker 1: in the United States versus Europe. We've talked about the

1111
01:08:17,479 --> 01:08:19,599
Speaker 1: cycles a little bit, but what about the voltages? Why

1112
01:08:19,680 --> 01:08:23,320
Speaker 1: is that different? Maybe I'll do that in the future episode.

1113
01:08:23,360 --> 01:08:25,800
Speaker 1: But for now, we're going to wrap this up, and guys,

1114
01:08:25,840 --> 01:08:28,559
Speaker 1: if you have any suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff,

1115
01:08:28,600 --> 01:08:30,320
Speaker 1: please get in touch with me. Let me know what

1116
01:08:30,400 --> 01:08:34,719
Speaker 1: you think. The email address for tech Stuff is text

1117
01:08:34,800 --> 01:08:37,960
Speaker 1: Stuff at how stuff works dot com, or you can

1118
01:08:38,040 --> 01:08:40,920
Speaker 1: drop me a line on Facebook or Twitter. The handle

1119
01:08:40,960 --> 01:08:43,200
Speaker 1: for the show at both of those locations is text

1120
01:08:43,200 --> 01:08:46,080
Speaker 1: Stuff H s W. As always, if you want to

1121
01:08:46,080 --> 01:08:49,599
Speaker 1: watch me record this live, you can visit twitch dot

1122
01:08:49,680 --> 01:08:53,160
Speaker 1: tv slash tech Stuff that's got a live stream of

1123
01:08:53,160 --> 01:08:56,679
Speaker 1: me recording these shows. You can see as I stumble

1124
01:08:56,720 --> 01:09:01,240
Speaker 1: my way through notes, go back, correct myself, yell at Dylan,

1125
01:09:02,600 --> 01:09:06,200
Speaker 1: wave at Matt Frederick. All sorts of crazy shenanigans can

1126
01:09:06,240 --> 01:09:08,919
Speaker 1: happen on camera to get cut out of the final podcast.

1127
01:09:08,960 --> 01:09:10,800
Speaker 1: So if you want to check that out, go to

1128
01:09:10,840 --> 01:09:14,120
Speaker 1: twitch dot tv slash tech Stuff. The schedule is up there,

1129
01:09:14,240 --> 01:09:17,280
Speaker 1: and I will talk to you guys again really soon

1130
01:09:23,520 --> 01:09:25,960
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics because

1131
01:09:26,000 --> 01:09:37,320
Speaker 1: it how staff works dot com