Scribd
Upload
54 views6 pages

Electricity Problems

The document provides background on Thomas Edison and discusses some of his inventions that are less well known, including an early vote recording machine, a method for preserving fruits and vegetables using vacuum tubes, and an ambitious but ultimately unsuccessful plan to mass produce affordable concrete homes that could help eliminate city slums. While Edison made many important contributions, the summary notes that some of his lesser known inventions and projects did not achieve widespread adoption for reasons such as lack of interest from politicians, technical and financial challenges, and aesthetic preferences against the proposed concrete housing materials and designs.

Uploaded by

elrojo2002
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
54 views6 pages

Electricity Problems

The document provides background on Thomas Edison and discusses some of his inventions that are less well known, including an early vote recording machine, a method for preserving fruits and vegetables using vacuum tubes, and an ambitious but ultimately unsuccessful plan to mass produce affordable concrete homes that could help eliminate city slums. While Edison made many important contributions, the summary notes that some of his lesser known inventions and projects did not achieve widespread adoption for reasons such as lack of interest from politicians, technical and financial challenges, and aesthetic preferences against the proposed concrete housing materials and designs.

Uploaded by

elrojo2002
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 6

How Electricity Works

Humans have an intimate relationship with electricity, to the point that it's virtually
impossible to separate your life from it. Sure, you can flee from the world of crisscrossing
power lines and live your life completely off the grid, but even at the loneliest corners of the
world, electricity exists. If it's not lighting up the storm clouds overhead or crackling in a
static spark at your fingertips, then it's moving through the human nervous system,
animating the brain's will in every flourish, breath and unthinking heartbeat.

When the same mysterious force energizes a loved one's touch, a stroke of lightning and a
George Foreman Grill, a curious duality ensues: We take electricity for granted one second
and gawk at its power the next. More than two and a half centuries have passed
since Benjamin Franklin and others proved lightning was a form of electricity, but it's still
hard not to flinch when a particularly violent flash lights up the horizon. On the other hand,
no one ever waxes poetic over a cell phone charger.

Electricity powers our world and our bodies. Harnessing its energy is both the domain of
imagined sorcery and humdrum, everyday life -- from Emperor Palpatine toasting Luke
Skywalker, to the simple act of ejecting the "Star Wars" disc from your PC. Despite our
familiarity with its effects, many people fail to understand exactly what electricity is -- a
ubiquitous form of energy resulting from the motion of charged particles, like electrons.
When put to the question, even acclaimed inventor Thomas Edison merely defined it as "a
mode of motion" and "a system of vibrations."

In this article, we'll try to provide a less slippery answer. We'll illuminate just what electricity
is, where it comes from and how humans bend it to their will.

For our first stop, we'll travel to Greece, where inquisitive ancients puzzled over the same
phenomena that zaps you when you touch a metal object after shuffling over the carpet on
a cold, dry day.
How did Nikola Tesla change the way
we use energy?

When you flip a switch and a lamp bathes the room in light, you probably don't give much
thought to how it works -- or to the people who made it all possible. If you were forced to
acknowledge the genius behind the lamp, you might name Thomas Alva Edison, the
inventor of the incandescent light bulb. But just as influential -- perhaps more so -- was a
visionary named Nikola Tesla.

Tesla arrived in the United States in 1884, at the age of 28, and by 1887 had filed for a
series of patents that described everything necessary to generate electricity
using alternating current, or AC. To understand the significance of these inventions, you
have to understand what the field of electrical generation was like at the end of the 19th
century. It was a war of currents -- with Tesla acting as one general and Edison acting as
the opposing general.

The State of Electricity in 1885


Edison unveiled his electric incandescent lamp to the public in January 1880. Soon
thereafter, his newly devised power system was installed in the First District of New York
City. When Edison flipped the switch during a public demonstration of the system in 1881,
electric lights twinkled on -- and unleashed an unprecedented demand for this brand-new
technology. Although Edison's early installations called for underground wiring, demand
was so great that parts of the city received their electricity on exposed wires hung from
wooden crossbeams. By 1885, avoiding electrical hazards had become an everyday part
of city life, so much so that Brooklyn named its baseball team the Dodgers because its
residents commonly dodged shocks from electrically powered trolley tracks [source: PBS].
Inventions by Thomas Edison (That
You've Never Heard Of)
Edison was a 22-year-old telegraph operator when he received his
first patent for a machine he called theelectrographic vote-recorder.
He was one of several inventors at the time developing methods for
legislative bodies, such as the U.S. Congress, to record their votes in a
more timely fashion than the time-honored voice vote system.

In Edison's vote-recorder, a voting device was connected to the clerk's


desk. At the desk, the names of the legislators were embedded in
metal type in two columns -- "yes" and "no." Legislators would move a
switch on the device to point to either "yes" or "no," sending
an electric current to the device at the clerk's desk. After voting was
completed, the clerk would place a chemically treated piece of paper
on top of the metal type and run a metal roller over it. The current
would cause the chemicals in the paper to dissolve on the side for
which the vote should be recorded. "Yes" and "no" wheels kept track of
the vote totals and tabulated the results.

A friend of Edison's, another telegraph operator named Dewitt Roberts,


bought an interest in his machine for $100 and tried to sell it to
Washington to no avail. Congress wanted no part of any device that
would increase the speed of voting -- decreasing the time for filibusters
and political wheeling and dealing -- so young Edison's vote-recorder
was sent to the political graveyard.
Inventions by Thomas Edison (That
You've Never Heard Of)
Another Edison invention came about from the laboratory's
work with glass vacuum tubes while developing the
incandescent light bulb. A development, we should add, that is
not solely Edison's. Many others were involved in the research
and labor of the light bulb production -- but Edison got the
much-sought after patents.
But getting back to our story. In 1881, Edison filed for a patent
for a method to preserve fruits, vegetables or other organic
substances in a glass vessel. The vessel was filled with the
items to be preserved, and then all the air was sucked from it
with an air pump. The vessel tube was sealed with another
piece of glass.
Another food-related invention, wax paper, is often attributed
to Edison, but it was invented in France in 1851 when Edison
was just a child. Edison did use wax paper in his sound
recording work, which might be where the story originated.
Inventions by Thomas Edison (That
You've Never Heard Of)

Not satisfied with having improved the average American's life


with electric lights, movies and phonographs, the Wizard of Menlo Park
decided in the early part of the 20th century to abolish city slums and
get every working man's family into sturdy, fire-proof homes that could
be built inexpensively on a mass scale. And what would those homes
be made of? Why, concrete, of course, using materials from the Edison
Portland Cement company. Edison, recalling his own working-class
upbringing, said he would take no profit if the venture succeeded.

Edison's plan was to pour the concrete into large, wooden molds the
size and shape of a house, let it cure, remove the framework and --
voila! A concrete house, with decorative molding, plumbing pipes, even
a bathtub, molded right in. Edison said these dwellings would sell for
around $1,200, about one-third the price of a regularly constructed
house at the time.

But while Edison Portland Cement was used in a lot of structures


around New York City during the building boom of the early 1900s, the
concrete houses never caught on. The molds and equipment needed
to make the homes required a huge financial investment that few
builders were able to make. Image was another problem -- not many
families wanted the social stigma of moving to a house that was touted
as getting people out of the slums. One other factor: Some people
thought the homes were ugly. While the company did build a few
concrete houses around New Jersey -- some still standing today --
Edison's vision of concrete neighborhoods never took [source: Onion].

And what did Edison expect you to furnish your concrete home with?
Keep reading to find out why the inventor wouldn't have been a good
interior designer.

You might also like