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The end of Direct Current (DC) electricity in New York

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Diamonddavej
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16 Nov 2007, 9:06 pm

The very last building in New York (and perhaps the entire world) that was supplied Direct Current (DC) was turned off on Wednesday (14th Dec 2007) and is now supplied Alternating Current, more than 100 years after Edison lost the AC/DC war that was won by Nicola Tesla (Aspie) and George Westinghouse. It uses a converter to change AC, from the grid, to DC electricity that is used in the building.

I am amazed to hear that DC was supplied up until 2007 - it is like reading about the death and therefore extinction of the last Mammoth or Dodo. What next? The last Spanish galleon returns to port!

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/ ... as-edison/



hartzofspace
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16 Nov 2007, 9:47 pm

That's very interesting. I've always been interested in stuff about electricity, and Tesla as well. BTW, did you mean Nov. 15th in your post?


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16 Nov 2007, 10:21 pm

It is extremely expensive to rewire and to replace all of the fixtures. Generally you need a cost justification.

DC works in a local area so there is no incentive to change it. Without some public official buying votes people would have to come up with their own.

AC to DC inverters aren't cheap, but they are 20 times cheaper than the alternative.

What gets me is how do they find appliances that run on DC.



woodsman25
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17 Nov 2007, 1:49 am

Thats interesting, but how do you know tesla was an aspie?


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iceb
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17 Nov 2007, 4:44 am

fascinating!

It' like finding the last dinosaur died week last Friday :)


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Diamonddavej
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17 Nov 2007, 7:22 pm

woodsman25 wrote:
Thats interesting, but how do you know tesla was an aspie?

From reading his biography it seems he had AS and OCD, he also described symptoms of synesthesia in his autobiography (saw words spoken to him in the form of flashes of light).

Quote:
Igor Bray: He did, he did have a very strange personality. On Thursday night here we had a one-man play by Frank Tabbita that I thoroughly recommend that people do investigate. There's a website called www.teslaplay.com And he tried to portray his character almost like a tragic character. He died alone and poor, but he was a man who played by his own rules. He was interested in invention and providing a legacy for mankind. He was not really interested in making money for himself. He would do things like measure the volume of food before he would eat it. Very strange. He had a preoccupation with the number three, and the physicists around the world are familiar with some of his eccentricities.



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18 Nov 2007, 3:15 am

I've had an interest in Tesla for a long time now, since I read about him in a book on steange history. I was really interested in the AC/DC war between the two. For example, Edison used to have his men electrocute animals to on the streets using AC to demonstrate the "dangers" of the current-type, up until the city ordered his actions stopped. This demonstrations eventually led to the inspiration and invention of the electric chair.

I don't really see how you can justify Tesla being an aspie just by his personality. As most of us know, autism is neurological, not just personality-wise. Research shows that the most intelligent people tend to have anti-social and eccentric traits, so Tesla can appear to be autistic and just be weird.