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This article is appallingly biased. It does the usual Teslaphile nonsense of attributing the entire development of the AC power system to one man. The reality is that functioning commerical AC power systems existed before Tesla even arrived in the US, never mind starting work there as an electrical engineer. Tesla's main practical contribution was an efficient AC motor. Securiger 13:30, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Or call it something like, The War of the Currents Continues.
In the U.S. Edison's name and face are everywhere despite the fact that it was he who lost the War of the Currents to Westinghouse and Tesla. Edison is mythologized as a giant as the "inventor of the light bulb" as if there is only one thing that is a light bulb. Note that the Edison entry says he was the inventor of "a long lasting light bulb" which is quite different from what American school children are taught. Some may say this description of "a" light bulb that "was the primary type of bulb in use for a long time" (is this what "long-lasting" means?) is biased (It will be interesting to check to see if the Wiki editor who wrote that description has also contributed to Tesla articles.) U.S. children are not taught about the Current Wars or thet there was even a choice and for all they know, things are as they are thanks only to Edison. Edison's public, circus-style electrocutions of dogs, cats, and (one) elephant, along with his work on the electric chair, his conviction of the scientific correctness of his own ideas over those of a foreigner outweighing his own moral conviction that capital punishment is wrong, all all conveniently left out of American history and the U.S. indoctrination system. The Wikipedia Tesla entry may be accused by some of bias on Edison as inventor of "the" lightbulb, in that it includes a patent for a light bulb that needs no wires, practically identical to the screw-in type that is the only type most of us know. There are no rock bands in the U.S. called Edison, as far as my limited awareness extends. That a group of rock-and-rollers (young rebels. bucking the Establishment?) would choose to call themselves Tesla is only possible a unique identifier or useful as a means of differentiation from the masses in a world where Tesla himself has largely been erased from history in an almost Stalinist fashion. The U.S. government wouldn't hire him in his later years, he was dismissed as a Mad Scientist, and yet the government immediately seized all his papers and effects on the day he was discovered dead and declared them "top secret." I guess the Wikipedia entries on Tesla all immediately refer to his ethnicity as a Serb and then much later on get to the facts that he did most of his work in the U.S.; his patents were mostly issued by the U.S. government; his (U.S.) radio patent was upheld as valid (against a challenge by a rival) by the U.S. Supreme Court; he was a U.S. citizen, and died in the U.S. But they never say, as they should, right up top, "Tesla was an American scientist and engineer." Indeed he was. Why has the United States essentially refused to claim him as an American scientist? I believe this is due to prejudice against Eastern Europeans; Edison was Dutch and English, the two highest-status ethnicities in the U.S. If George Westinghouse had not bought Tesla's patents and processess and championed the cause; if Tesla himself had been the only opposition to Edison, we'd all be using DC power today. On Wikipedia the bias in favor of Tesla in related entries seems to be moved forward by those Tesla fans who just happen to favor the underdog and those who share his nationality, and finally, as mentioned in the talk pages here, those who say that ultimately the bias is borne out by history inasmuch as Tesla's arguments for AC ultimately won out. As for my own bias, I certainly like to side with the underdog, especially if he turns out to be right. On the other hand, Edison was and is a man worthy of admiration. But if anybody has any documented sources for a current bias debate or any historical explanation of the bias for or against Tesla or Edison, we could have a new section here. RUReady2Testify 20:34, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
Well it is a largely a choice made ages ago and it trickles down as an economy grows around it.
Name one home appliance which does not use a rectifier today
Take this example, the bulb, the fan and a couple of other things like maybe the radio were the only things which existed during the "War of currents" era. Who predicted the TV and the Comps and the Microwaves, all of which today internally have an SMPS and work on 48V DC, funnily :))
People jumpstarted on AC, and which is why electronics was born, to solve the problem around AC.. else that billion dollar industry would be dead, right? :)
Finally the choices are, from an instituional perspective about money and how to spread the wealth. My father saw the last remains of 240V DC while he grew up too, and those fans and those lights worked just as well
(hang the fact that the brushes were a problem... the regulators and the AC fans slowing down due to coil magnetization today are a probably a bigger problem).
So it is all about time and history, practically probably with solar cells today, DC will have a brighter future... —Preceding
unsigned comment added by
220.227.207.194 (
talk)
08:48, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
Someone ( User:cataclysm) recently took it upon himself to change the section where the basic advantage of AC over DC is discussed. Yes, AC is slightly more efficient than DC due to the effect mentioned, and high frequencies better than low - but this is NOT the principal reason why AC is used instead of DC. The overwhelming advantage of AC is that it can be transformed to a high voltage and high voltage/low current distribution will only suffer relatively minor power losses due to line resistance. Besides, this explantion can be understood easily by the layman (remember, our dear readers?) whereas the electron behaviour that transfers the charge is a far more esoteric effect (and wrongly given, in this context). Graham 06:29, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
In central business districts, DC was used very successfully for many years. A 120 or 120/240 volt network was installed below street level with a network vault outside major buildings. Heavy fused leads carried the current into the building to the building panel, and circuits from there went to all the floors to operate lights, the elevator, fans, pumps, toasters, vacuum cleaners, radios, and all manner of office equipment. A 10 story building might be thus served by 120/240 volt DC risers. A massive central battery maintained the current if the generators all failed simultaneously. Rotary converters were used to convert DC to AC or AC to DC or AC of 60 Hz to AC of lower frequency for railroads. Customers loved the continuity of the power, which remained on through power storms and failures of a transmission cable, since the transmission was redundant and the distribution had battery backup. Eventually, by the 1930's engineers at GE and Westinghouse developed Network Protector switches and relays which allowed the replacement of the DC network by a low voltage senondary AC network, at 120 volts per phase or 208 volts between phases. The protector closed automatically when the transformer was energized on the high side and the phase relationship was correct for power to lflow to the secondary low voltage grid. Continuity of power to the customer was achieved by the fact that four or more 12kv AC lines could be used to power several transformers each at various spots around the grid, which could be many blocks by many blocks. Such a grid might go for decades without even a momentary interruption, unlike normal AC service where a line can be interrupted by lightning or tree contact, or an underground line by cable failure. The grid would continue to be supplied by the remaining lines, and the network protector would open automatically to isolate the faulted primary. Secondary faults would literally burn clear, with 50,000 amps or so of available fault current. When the changeover from DC grid to AC grid was made, the customer did not notice any change for the most part. Universal motors worked on AC as well as DC, and mercury rectifiers were supplied to power big DC motors. With AC available, building transformer vaults were added as well as spot networks on various floors of high rises. This part of the history should be added to the article, I think, with suitable references. Most of the Wikipedia articles give the impression that DC distribution was abandoned by the end of the 19th century, which was certainly not the case for central business districts of many large cities around the world. Edison 21:36, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
As of late June, 2007, the article claims: "In January 2005, Consolidated Edison announced that it would cut off DC service to its remaining 1600 customers (all in Manhattan) by the end of the year." While literally true, that is not particularly interesting. As with many prior "final cutoffs," the one named was abandoned. At www.coned.com/sales/business/bus_elec.asp, a reader will find that Con Ed went for the gold instead, proposing surcharges ranging from $588 to $91,000 per year plus $0.0231 per kWh, approved in part. This was an increase from previous suracharges starting at $385 per month (Jay Romano, A push to unplug DC power, NY Times, March 18, 2001).
I wish the article title was War of the currents - would seem to be better English. -- Wtshymanski 20:42, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
Interesting article, It is funny how most modern power transmission text books always site the fact that DC is indeed more efficent over long distances. Funny how we go around in circles........
This article states that the first transmission of electric power between cities was from Niagara Falls to Buffalo in 1896, but that is incorrect. Power was transmitted from an AC power plant in Oregon City to Portland, Oregon, in 1889.
The Folsom Powerhouse in Folsom, CA is a National Mechanical Engineering Landmark and a National Historic Landmark for the longest 3-phase high-voltage AC transmission up to that time. It first transmitted to Sacramento, CA, 21 miles away, on July 13, 1895. While there is some dispute over whether this is actually the longest up to that time, it is certainly before Niagara Falls' 1896 date. Also--according to Wikipedia's article on General Electric, Thomson Houston and GE merged in 1892. This article strongly implies that the merger and GE's production of AC generators was after Niagara Falls powerplant. Not true! In fact, the Folsom Powerhouse (now a California State Historic Park) still has its 1895 AC generators. 207.114.244.5 ( talk) 18:10, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
I know the discussion over this article has died down but after stumbling upon it, I felt compelled to comment. This article does seem to be excessively favoring Tesla, (e.g. a section is called Edison's Propaganda). I would like for this article to perhaps be examined by electrical experts because there seems to be no other way to untangle and remove the issue of bias without affecting the article.-- Jonthecheet 02:41, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
Tesla was not closely involved in the electrification of Niagara Falls. He sold Westinghouse his patent and had a Chief Engineer title, but spent his time experimenting with high voltage , high frequency effects in his New York lab. Westinghouse was producing AC at around 130 hz when Tesla sold him the motor patent, and Tesla could not get his motors to work satisfactorily at that frequency. But to his followers, he is the only person to ever touch AC.
Edison
21:44, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
Have you checked out some better references? Empires of light is ok, but notthe best bio on Tesla. J. D. Redding 19:42, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
Who owns Tesla's patents today? GE?
The patents have all lapsed. They are a century old.
Westinghouse owned them. Edison 21:44, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
This article is biased to those who favour Edison over Tesla and I would imagine the same bias exists from the Edison angle. It will never go away as the AC vs.DC debate is a microcosm of the Tesla vs. Edison debate. There is a jealousy between both camps. Arguments can be made for both currents when different factors are considered but the above dribble is no more than a Pete Rose vs. Ty Cobb debate. There is no doubt that AC existed before Tesla even hit America, however, he revolutionized it by catapulting it into what it is today, and for that, it will always be tagged to his name due to assimilation. So, to put into laymans terms for all you EEs who chose to use Wikipedia as a forum to vent, the fridge, like AC, was a good idea, but not until the first beer was pulled out. I suggest you put your textbooks away and make your fridges a great invention. Relax!!! This is Wikipedia!
Hey, I'm doing a project on Edison, and every source I find on the Edison vs. Tesla conflict is extremely biased towards Tesla. Can anyone recommend some good sources to check out on the subject? 68.54.117.60 ( talk) 23:59, 17 September 2008 (UTC)Savanna
Is there any energy domain treatise of transmission line theory? I remember there were few out there.
Edison would have had AC banned I believe. But it is ironic that he had to fight against the gas companies, during the early years, to get electricity up and running.
It is also ironic that all "useable" equipment is DC, wonder if "gas" was indeed better than sitting and computing power factors and impedence losses!
Any chances of adding 2 capacitors in series and tapping the load across each "half" to step down the voltage?
Seems to work like the fridge for me ;o)
well well why is it that all grids lock back on DC? there must be a reason for this.
Could someone list the specific points in a bullet list or numbered list so some resolution can be done about the npov tag? Otherwise it should be removed. 204.56.7.1 18:58, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
Who named it "War of Currents"? Being capitalized I presume it has been labelled as a proper name by someone, which means it should have a reference and be explained. If a wikipedian made it up then renaming should be discussed. Cburnett 05:26, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
Is it just me or is this a bit odd sounding: in an article about the War of Currents the second line is “Several undercurrents lay beneath this rivalry.” Could we change that? Maybe? -- Dolphinn 21:11, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
"Since metal conducting wires have a certain resistance, some power will be wasted as heat in the wires. This power loss is given by P = I2R"
P = I2R shows that if we say double the current, the power loss more than doubles. Which equation shows the effect of increasing the voltage? Doing some rearranging I came up with P = V2/R, is this correct? If so it would show mathematically that doubling the voltage does not lead to as much power loss as doubling the curent. However this only follows if R > 1 and I have no idea what typical values for R would be. Have I got this completely wrong? Shorvath 05:56, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
Interesting, but take this perspective: let V be the rms AC voltage /or flat DC voltage, R be the resistance and X be the impedence. Hence the actual power used Active power = V.I.cos(phase) = V^2 .R /(R^2+X^2) R/(R^2+x^2) being I cos(phase) now if the voltage source was DC power consumed = V^2/R < V^2.R/(R^2+X^2) as (R^2+X^2)/R > R So is it correct to say that DC would actually consume less power i.e if there was no impedence to worry about, (other than the transient) a DC transmission line would actually use less power? As far as current goes and conductor rating goes, for any high voltage you need a thicker wire till it melts, however assume one was to send rms value(220V) DC instead of AC one would need the same type of cables and yet experience less power loss? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Alokdube ( talk • contribs) 07:07, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
Skin effect is a function of frequency only. 60 Hz leads to 8.5 mm as characteristical depth of current flow in a conductor of copper. Only hollow tubes make sense for high-current applications at 60 Hz instead of massive cylindrical rods (wires), if more than (+/-) 17 mm diameter would be necessary for a fitting conducting cross section area. (Copper, eventually silverplated) litz wire make sense only for frequencies above 100 kHz where skin depth decreases to 0.2 mm and less, and it works only if all its parallel tiny filaments are isolated from each other, usually by enamel. -- Helium4 ( talk) 10:13, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
I would still relook the VI cos phase approach. Remember we are interested in transmitting power from A to B, so the actual power is the active component. While the reactive component is available in the line and can be dissipated out over time, the actual measure is "how much active was transmitted". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 115.99.182.242 ( talk) 12:19, 12 October 2015 (UTC)
Could someone list the specific points for cleanup? It would help to rectify the situation. If not listed n the next several days, the tag should be removed. J. D. Redding 19:43, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
List of citations needed. Place citations under bullet. J. D. Redding 19:55, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
Edison, a proponent of DC, called AC, the killer current, and was a proponent of using AC for electrocutions, a process that Edison called 'Westinghousing'. Westinghouse, a proponent of AC, thought that the condemed should be put to death with DC, a process that Westinghouse called 'Edisoning'. CorvetteZ51 12:59, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
It says somewhere in here that underground transmission voltages are lower than overhead transmission voltages because of insulation issues. That's not really true; the voltages are about the same in most cases. It's true that underground transmission can cost more, and it can't be overloaded in an emergency as much as overhead open wires can be.
Nobody missed DC in the cities for several reasons. The most interesting was that the leakage currents--they're unavoidable even in carefully-engineered systems--caused great corrosion in other buried utilities. This is still a problem in places where there are street railways powered by DC.
I think the discussion of the advantages of AC vs. DC in every conceivable electrical device is, well, unnecessary. Automobiles use DC because there's a battery to deal with. Telephones use DC because they'd sound awfully funny with AC power. Electrical substations use 120v DC (supplied with substantial lead-acid battery banks) to run their circuit breakers.
One advantage of Edison's DC system not mentioned in the article was that you could use a bank of storage batteries as both a back-up supply and to adjust the voltage of the system. Both were common practices in the early days. (Now, it looks like AEP will be using sodium-sulfur batteries to back up its transmission system. Amazing how it all comes back around, this time courtesy of high-power electronic devices. Kinsler33 07:11, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
I just removed an AfD from this article which was added by an editor with no other edits. The stated reason is in my opinion inaccurate - while there is extensive mention of Tesla, it's in context and the primary dispute was between Edison and Westinghouse. The article is linked from dozens of other articles. -- Wtshymanski 14:36, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
Westinghouse was using much of tesla's work. The true fight was between Tesla and Edison. Tesla was backed by Westinghouse. J. D. Redding 14:37, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
Look at [2] and see if we can't fix some of the reasons this didn't make FA in 2004! -- Wtshymanski ( talk) 21:01, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
Did anyone read that article in the Economist a while ago about how a DC grid might be the way of the future? They claim DC can now be used to more effectively transmit power long distances (voltage can be effectively stepped up) and works well with things like wind mills and "smart grids". Should that be mentioned in the article? That there is some speculation that ultimately the Edison design may win out in some places? TastyCakes ( talk) 19:58, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
Is there any source for this statement: Edison's series of animal executions peaked with the filmed electrocution of Topsy, a Coney Island circus elephant. The event ist dated 1903, 15 years after the invention of the electric chair. All patents, including that for the transformator, expired earlier und The New York Edison Co. obviously was 1903 not in the ownership of Thomas Alva Edison. Source: a brief history of con edison
In my opinion, there is no relationship to the war of currents. it was in the interest of the owners of luna park, coney island, to get publicity and it was in the interest of The Edison Manufacturing Co., a film producing company of Thomas A. Edison, to get spectacular pictures for their business with the kinetoscope.
Furthermore, I cant't see any prove for a responibility of Mr. Edison for the execution of the elephant. It was a descison of the owners of luna park. A New York studio of one of his companies took pictures, that's all.
Source of the Event, Thomas Alva Edison is not mentioned: Online-Archiv The New York Times: CONEY ELEPHANT KILLED; Topsy Overcome with Cyanide of Potassium and Electricity. 5. Januar 1903 -- Hgn-p ( talk) 23:40, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
I'm curious, and I'm not sure if this would belong in this article or another article, how the remnant DC customers of Con Ed dealt with use of DC. Did they have to buy converters for their appliances that required AC? Did they get a hold of very special models of appliances that worked with DC? I mean, what happened when they went to the store and bought a new stereo, then tried to plug it into their outlet at home? 63.87.189.17 ( talk) 16:43, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
Speaking of Modern Use ...
To this day, major telecommunications companies still use DC to power their support systems. It would be interesting to see a technical update from one of the major telecoms. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.254.4.6 ( talk) 19:15, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
If superconductors ever become a practical means of transmitting power over long distances, we'll probably end up going back to DC. As the article mentions, the reason we use AC now is because AC has lower power losses over such distances. With superconductors, though, the power loss for DC is zero, so this isn't a factor. Trying to run an AC current through a superconductor would lead to nonzero power loss since all AC currents act like antennas to some respect, radiating energy.
Perhaps we should mention this possibility in the article somewhere? Stonemason89 ( talk) 03:31, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
I have a major problem with this statement not being supported DIRECTLY by the source cited:
"Edison carried out a campaign to discourage the use of alternating current, including spreading disinformation on fatal AC accidents, publicly killing animals, and lobbying against the use of AC in state legislatures. Edison directed his technicians, primarily Arthur Kennelly and Harold P. Brown, to preside over several AC-driven killings of animals, primarily stray cats and dogs but also unwanted cattle and horses."
The source cited is pieced together rather than directly stating that his technicians presided over these killings, and therefore should not be used to back up this statement. The only things that I gathered from the source as presented were that they got their directions weekly, and the State of New York electrocuted animals for testing, not that Edison directed them to preside over the testing. Monsieurdl mon talk 12:34, 7 October 2011 (UTC)
The source cited for this sentence of War of Currents#Early transmission analysis:
is "Wiggers, C. J. et al. 1940". I expected to find "Wiggers" in a Bibliograpy, or maybe further reading, but it is not there.! This type of issue seems to come up regularly on the Ref desks, and I remember taking part in such discussion as an IP editor and finding sources. Has there ever been a locateable source for this statement? (though it seems reasonable, it may not be true.) And
wp:verifiability requires it to be reliably sourced.
Oh dear, Wiggers is also cited at
Ventricular fibrillation too (ref #22), but no title or anything else to identify the 'source'.
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of War of Currents's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.
Reference named "Bláthy_HPO":
{{
cite web}}
: Check date values in: |accessdate=
(
help)I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 11:09, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
I removed (most of) the paragraph ( diff) on "undercurrents" in a "rivalry" between Tesla and Edison in the "War of Currents" because it put forward a premise that this was simply a Tesla/Edison thing and tried to verify it by citing a series of anecdotal stories about Tesla when he worked for Edison. The claim that there was a direct rivalry during the "War of Currents" is unverified. Also in the section was an unverified claim that Tesla was a partner with Westinghouse. Westinghouse licensed Tesla's patents and hired him as a consultant, but that is not a "partnership". Fountains of Bryn Mawr ( talk) 15:44, 31 August 2012 (UTC)
Moved this section to talk. Wikipedia does not contain analysis per WP:NOT#OR. Contains unreferenced claims such as Tesla made it "clear that AC was the future". Large parts of this section also seem to be redundant to other article content. Fountains of Bryn Mawr ( talk) 16:23, 3 July 2013 (UTC)
This need to be restored. User:Fountains Seems to be removing relevant info from articles. -- J. D. Redding 12:56, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
Lead needs a summary. Badly ... -- J. D. Redding 05:50, 28 July 2013 (UTC)
So what was happening in Europe? They had some DC systems, too - who were the players there, was there more than just AEG ( which at its start was an Edison patent licensee, but rapidly went its own way) ? Tons of stuff on the Hungarians but no context, as usual. -- Wtshymanski ( talk) 02:39, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
In an edit of 18:33, 16 November 2011 a paragraph was added re Bankside's generation of 200VDC for Fleet Street presses, and that its closure was precipitated by the move of presses out of Fleet Street. While parts of this may be true (there's no reason to assume that Bankside didn't generate a small 200VDC feed for Fleet Street), I think its inclusion is highly dubious. All the citations which I've seen, independent of Wikipedia, suggest that Bankside was grid-connected, and a considerable plant. A tiny proportion of the hundreds of megawatts which it generated would have been consumed by presses, and it seems very doubtful that 300MW was ever fed by 200VDC to the other side of the river (one and a half mega amps, anyone?). If it were, you'd expect to see it mentioned on the Bankside Power Station page. Independent works suggest that the station was closed by a change in the economic fuel mix for power generation, which fits better historically with 1981 than the later abandoning of Fleet Street (eg Wapping was 1986).
It is possible that the station was run down to a low power only a 200V DC feed in its later years, but also sounds rather odd to maintain a large oil-powered plant station for such purposes and there's no evidence of this, either, in any of the reminiscences and the like you find online of workers at the plant.
None of this is conclusive, but I smell a massive fish here. Either it's nonsense or remarkable enough to need further elaboration. Could someone check? 79.65.132.47 ( talk) 00:30, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
I see no references stating Topsy was part of the War of Currents. Edison's (General Electric) was AC in 1903, and it was not run by Edison any more. Also IMdb is not a source. "Topsy: The Startling Story of the Crooked-tailed Elephant" by Michael Daly page 319 also states this was not part of the War of Currents. Method of execution was chosen by owners, Frederick Thompson and Elmer Dundy. Fountains of Bryn Mawr ( talk) 00:35, 26 June 2014 (UTC)
quote
|
---|
Edison’s DC standard was rapidly slipping into irrelevancy, but the Old Man still had some fight left in him. Even though General Electric had become just another firm hawking the “deadly” alternating current, Edison longed to fight another round. Seeing DC all but lose the war of currents was a rare and unsettling defeat for the Wizard, and Edison kept a sharp eye out for an opportunity to stick it to his AC opponents. Early in 1903, he got his chance. The situation was appropriately circus-like” Edison agreed to lend his technical expertise to the public electrocution of a rouge Coney Island elephant named Topsy. |
Binksternet, you're more familiar with the history of this article than I am. Petri Krohn and Reddi seem to think it underwent some revisionist rot in the last year or two. Would you say that's a fair assessment?
MrScorch6200, Ɱ, and Fountains of Bryn Mawr, instead of spending all summer re-inventing the wheel, how would you feel about reverting to the earlier version that many people seemed to have been happy with? If it's a little over-heavy on the Tesla lore we can moderate it, but it might save us a considerable amount of time.-- Atlantictire ( talk) 03:47, 26 June 2014 (UTC)
Fountains of Bryn Mawr is keen to remove unsourced material. I'm afraid we have a lot of unsourced information in the article that will render it unintelligible or POV should it be eliminated. I'm busy today, but I can start this tomorrow. Help would be greatly appreciated.-- Atlantictire ( talk) 19:53, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
I think we need a sub-page that describes the details of the Edison DC systems. Such as, the outlets and the different voltages used. The article says there was a different voltage used for motors, but does not say what it was. Z gin der 2014-07-04T14:46:33Z
The article states "Low-frequency (50–60 Hz) alternating currents can be more dangerous than similar levels of DC since the alternating fluctuations can cause the heart to lose coordination, inducing ventricular fibrillation, a deadly heart rhythm that must be corrected immediately." and then cites as reference something offline from 1940. Without wading into the modern dispute about AC, health hazards from EM fields, etc, and speaking only from the POV of a 'War' which was almost certainly over by 1940, should this statement be allowed to remain? I am hesitant to do it myself as I see prior discussion about this bit of the article. Tinfoil666 ( talk) 18:22, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
High energy DC power transmission is currently in use as documented in the wiki article: /info/en/?search=High-voltage_direct_current
A few clear examples for the Pacific NW:
http://www.bpa.gov/transmission/Projects/line-projects/Pages/PDCI-Upgrade-Project.aspx
As used in this article Power Transmission appears to be talking about what is typically considered to be Power Distribution. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mr. KnowItAllToo ( talk • contribs) 15:33, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
This article states: "Edison opposed capital punishment, but his desire to disparage the system of alternating current led to the invention of the electric chair." This is contradicted by both the Electric Chair and William Kemmler articles that state that the electric chair was invented by Buffalo, New York dentist Alfred Southwick, who did not appear to be influenced by Edison in any way. 192.249.47.204 ( talk) 19:04, 1 September 2015 (UTC)
Major expansion/reorganization of the "Current Wars", bare outline expanded to cover the main aspects of the War of Currents, and section moved up (its the main topic of the article). Lead edited to summarize body content. Other material left mostly as is but I am noticing the "Remnant and existent DC systems" section is off topic i.e. not about the 1888-1892 War of Currents, its a "History of DC section" so in the wrong article, it should probably be moved to History of electric power transmission or Direct current. Fountains of Bryn Mawr ( talk) 03:28, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
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Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 07:24, 10 December 2017 (UTC)
"Hybrid and all-electric vehicle propulsion with internal power-supply"
This is highly misleading. Although of course the HV battery is DC, the power distribution level e.g. of a Toyota Prius isn't, and definitely not propulsion. The energy transfer grid of Prius and similar hybrid and/or electric cars operate at three-phase AC, and definitely the motorgenerators do. Roughly: Battery 200 V DC, transfer 400 V three-phase AC, motorgenerators 600 V three-phase AC.
Electric DC motors are inefficient and high-maintenance, single phase AC motors are inefficient. 134.247.251.245 ( talk) 14:42, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
I was just casually browsing one fine evening, quite curious about this topic. But the bulky lead/lede just put me off immediately, sorry. It should be shorter and more to-the-point, IMHO. I've put up the relevant template - hoping things can be trimmed. I might find some time & work on it myself for a little bit, but in the mean time, let us try & improve nonetheless... 16:34, 21 January 2019 (UTC) Feer 16:36, 21 January 2019 (UTC)
I get that we don't normally capitalise stuff, but googling it seems to indicate it's a proper noun in multiple references. In 2017 Dicklyon seems to have taken it upon himself to just rename the article and heading without any obvious discussion at all (unless I missed it, which is possible, it could even have been discussed on another page).
I mean it's not a general thing, there's not multiple current wars. Or are we planning to remove capitalisation from stuff like 'Wars of the Roses' too??? It all seems a bit odd. With all due respect I think this got messed up. Everyone makes mistakes, but what do others think? GliderMaven ( talk) 05:18, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
Per
MOS:CAPS, WP relies on empirical evidence to determine capitalisation: only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia
. This is done on a case-by-case basis, so capitalisation of
Hundred Years’ War and
Wars of the Roses are separate cases for which the evidence supports capitalisation. Coining a phrase does not make the phrase a proper name nor confer upon it capitalisation ipso facto and definitions of war are not limited to armed conflict; hence, a war of words. The phrase is descriptive and thereby does not satisfy one theoretical requisites of what a proper name is. Regards,
Cinderella157 (
talk)
05:23, 5 January 2020 (UTC)
It takes only a few seconds to prove that sources are not consistently capitalizing this:
[5],
[6],
[7],
[8],
[9],
[10],
[11],
[12],
[13],
[14],
[15],
[16],
[17],
[18],
[19], all from my first page of search results. It's clear that capitalizing it is fairly common, yet: A) It's most common in entertainment and news publications, in reviews of a recent film about this, and both are genres apt to over-capitalize anything when in doubt, most especially when there's any kind of entertainment-industry connection. B) However, even many of those publications do not capitalize this phrase or its variants (except
The Current War in reference to the film); if the "bastion of over-capping" isn't over-capping as much as some people above think they are, then this obviously does not rise to the
WP:MOSCAPS and
WP:NCCAPS standard of not applying capital letters unless the sources do so with near consistency. The clincher is the Google Scholar results: the phrase is much more frequently lower-case, even in titles (academic journals tend to use sentence case like Wikipedia does)
[20]. This case is basically the same as
war on women and
war on poverty; it's a catchy and polarizing and hyperbolic phrase, but not a proper name. See in particular
Talk:War on cancer#Requested move 16 November 2019 (a mass RM), and
Talk:War on drugs/Archive 2#Requested move 24 September 2017. That last had a weak claim to being a proper name, because of "official" use of the phrase by various governmental bodies who tended to capitalize it. Nevertheless, many sources did not, so WP does not.
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼
23:31, 5 January 2020 (UTC)
Recently Liltender has been repeatedly [21], [22] adding the statement
I think this statement gives WP:UNDUE WEIGHT to the three engineers ZBD, as the 'divided' or laminated iron core was developed over the previous 50 years by a number of researchers:
I'm still asking you, where are your proofs for these relevations? None of your links can show your statements. Divided iron wires are not equal with laminated iron plates (the real lamination). Only plate form is very effective, iron wires can reduce eddy current only slightly. So the real laminated iron plates (which were effective) were invented by the ZBD team.--
Liltender (
talk)
22:07, 12 March 2020 (UTC)
Not all induction colis are transformers, but all transformers are induction colils. I suggest take a research about the pictures of your above mentioned patents.--
Liltender (
talk)
07:25, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
Induction colils are not automatically transformers. Induction as a phenomenon was discovered long before the suspection of the idea of AC current, and itself the idea of the transformation of AC current. So early experiments of the induction coils did not use the coils to change any voltage of the AC, so they did not TRANSFORM the voltage!!! In short, these early induction coils were not even used for the transformation of AC! Ganz company have never built a single Direct Current system, when American, British or German companies produced exclusively DC systems. The first commercial AC power station statred to build by the GANZ company in Rome and Vienna in 1885, when Westinghouse and any other companies had still no viable AC solutions. (in 1886 Stanley of Westinghouse still experimented with open-core non laminated "transformers". See his patent from 1886. Moreover, other companies had no clue about parallel circuits. They used series circuit systems.-- Liltender ( talk) 15:06, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
PLEASE read that book:
Title United States Congressional Serial Set, Volume 5795 Contributor United States. Congress Publisher U.S. Government Printing Office, 1910
PAGE: 44-50
LINK: https://books.google.com/books?id=B-RGAQAAIAAJ&pg=RA3-PA45&dq=austria-hungary+%22000+horsepower%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjf77LL1vfnAhWwmIsKHdQqDbIQ6AEISDAD#v=onepage&q=austria-hungary%20%22000%20horsepower%22&f=false — Preceding unsigned comment added by Liltender ( talk • contribs) 15:14, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
Moreover, Gaulard and Gibbs did not use their induction coils to change the voltage of their system, but they increased voltage with usage of series circuit connection!!!! You can read about it here:
"Gaulard and Gibbs created high voltage by utilizing connection in series, rather than changing voltages through the use of their transformer." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Liltender ( talk • contribs) 17:05, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
The Power Makers: Steam, Electricity, and the Men Who Invented Modern America
By Maury Klein PAGE: 220
Before the ZBD team nobody understand the Transformer principle: Vp/Vs = Np/Ns
So earlier inventors did not use it to transform the AC current. They decreased the voltage by decrasing the efficiency of the device. So they simply decreased the magnetic induction, thus they decreased the Voltage and the amperage of the system at the same time!!!! Crazy and very stupid, isn't it?-- Liltender ( talk) 17:09, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
Sorry, but even modern researchers also use old scientific gazettes books and magazines, which were close to the disputed era. It is called original source.-- Liltender ( talk) 19:22, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
researchers" errr, @ Liltender:, we are not researchers, please read WP:CCPOL. Fountains of Bryn Mawr ( talk) 19:37, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
I mean original old gazettes and publications can decide most of the debates among experts. What is your problem with Maury Klein? He is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Rhode Island. Are you a university professor too, whose opinion is relevant on this field, or you are just a typical Wikipedia layman editor without any high academic career, who tries to dispute the opinion of professors?-- Liltender ( talk) 20:22, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
First, you must prove that induction coils before the ZBD (not transformers) were used for the up/down tranformation of voltage, and about the existence of the knowledge that how the number of turns of windings of the primer and secunder coils can effect the voltage. Of course you can't. As in the example of Gaulard and Gibbs, they make adjustable (movable) iron cores in their coils, which can reduce the whole EMF and magnetism, thus they decreased voltage with the brutal descreasing of the efficiency.-- Liltender ( talk) 07:34, 17 March 2020 (UTC)
First concentrate on the question, did real transformers existed before ZBD, which up/down transformed AC. As far as I know, the pre-ZBD era induction coils (they are not real transformer) lowered the voltage by paceing the iron core further from the coils, thus they decreased efficiancy and EMF to lower the voltage. That induction coils were not transformers.-- Liltender ( talk) 09:51, 29 March 2020 (UTC)
After adding the Nikola Tesla template, where this article is listed, to this page, and receiving a revert with language about Tesla being irrelevant to the topic by the time of the current war, I had a closer reading of the article and talk page. Wikipedia's present take on Tesla's influence on the topic has me thinking, at least on paper for a few seconds, if I saw a fake film about this last year, which centered on Tesla, Edison, and Westinghouse (remember going to the movies? popcorn, a screen the size of a mountain, and maskless people everywhere actually opening their mouths to laugh). Finding the lack of Tesla in this article strange, and having little more than a layman's knowledge of Tesla (including the Niagara power station), I thought I'd bring the question here: Should this article be removed from the {{ Nikola Tesla}} template? If not, well, then the template should be placed back on the page. And save your film ticket stubs, as your grandchildren will sit on your lap at a distance and ask through their masks, "Gramps, did Tesla really invent movies, the jet airplane, and Covid-19?" and you will answer yes, yes, of course he did. Randy Kryn ( talk) 00:00, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
Haven't seen the movie and I would take it with a grain of salt. Poly-phase motors and related power systems (a-la Tesla) were a pipe dream all through the late 1880s and 1890s, and Westinghouse's investors knew it (almost pulled his plug). Westinghouse's potential customers were not about to go out and buy all new Tesla induction motors even if they were available, they wanted power for their already existing arc lights, light bulbs, single phase AC motors, and DC motors (there were street cars out there that needed power and that wouldn't change for 100 years). So the real invention that made the Westinghouse system feasible was the rotary converter, it powered everyone. It ain't sexy and it ain't Tesla, but it got the job done (would make for a boring Tesla movie though ;)). Fountains of Bryn Mawr ( talk) 19:29, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
User:Fountains of Bryn Mawr has a tendency to remove the inventions and discoveries of non-English language speaking words. He is an anglo-centric editor in the wiki. He removed the invention of the constant voltage AC generator by the Ganz Company in 1883, despite of the excellent references.-- Pharaph ( talk) 19:04, 26 November 2023 (UTC)
In 1883 the Ganz Works invented the constant voltage alternator, ('voltage source, voltage intensive' systems [VSVI] ) which became a determinant milestone of the alternator technology, [1] that could produce a stated output voltage, regardless of the value of the actual load. [2]
-- Pharaph ( talk) 06:55, 27 November 2023 (UTC)
So... you didn't bother to read the notice about WP:NPA? Fountains of Bryn Mawr ( talk) 14:17, 27 November 2023 (UTC)
Paper does not cover Westinghouse or the War of the Currents. Fountains of Bryn Mawr ( talk) 01:27, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
It seems you did not even read the short essay on the link, how can we discuss the topic in rational way, if you don't want/ refuse to read anything I did show you?
PAGE 13: "The chief electrician of Edison Central Station, Pearl Street, New York City, J. W. Lieb visited the Ganz Works in 1885 and was filled with enthusiasm; he urged the Edison Electric Light Company to buy the patent rights to manufacture the Ganz transformers in the United States, but the company, at that time, did not realize the commercial importance of the invention. Only one year later, in 1886, was an agreement arrived at for an option concerning the manufacture for twenty thousand dollars."
And Westinghouse and Gaulard and Gibbs followed the trednd of Ganz Company (Ganz made already AC power plants based on their ZBD patents, when the Gaulard Gibs sent a modified Transformer to the Americans:
Page 13: "George Westinghouse took a different view on the importance of transformers. It was Pantaleoni who emphatically advised Westinghouse to take up work in alternating current. The Gaulard-Gibbs patents were therefore bought, and the first "secondary generators" in the U. S. arrived in November 1885; they were, however, fitted with closed magnetic circuits already."
When Blathy asked Gaulard in Turin exhibition in 1884, "why did not used closed iron core" Gaulard replied: "It would have been harmful and uneconomical" Reference:
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4500994
This article also explain that Gaulard-Gibs design did not even use the principle of different turn ratios in the primary and secondary coils to change the voltage, the turn ratio of primary and secondary coils were 1:1. Why? Because their open-core design decreased voltage (down step) by increasing the phyysical distance between primary and secondary coils (type of brutal waste of energy). So it did not used the classic transformer principle of different turn ratios of the primary and secondary coils.
Quote from the reference text: "The voltage was controlled by pushing in and pulling out this iron core" -- Pharaph ( talk) 08:21, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
The main problem is Stanley, he is falsely indicated as the inventor or important contributor of the Transformer. Copying other people's already published inventions/innovations is not real invention, it is just imitation. Does Stanley have any proofs for his priority related to transformers? No he has not. What did he actually invent in transformers which was not patented and published earlier by others? He is nothing more than a debunked American (false) iventor-hero of AC undergoing serious myth making in the posterior-- Pharaph ( talk) 19:41, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
We are speaking about this generator, it used the new AC parallel connection of utilization loads. US Patent 284,110A See the patent: https://patents.google.com/patent/US284110A/en?q=(zipernowsky)&oq=zipernowsky+&sort=old This type of constant voltage generator led to the idea of parallel connection in Transformers, a milestone in ZBD Transformers (All other companies used the backward series connections). So this generator influenced the later development of transformers via the parallel power distribution concept.-- Pharaph ( talk) 20:34, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
We are speaking about this generator, it used the new AC parallel connection of utilization loads. US Patent 284,110A See the patent: https://patents.google.com/patent/US284110A/en?q=(zipernowsky)&oq=zipernowsky+&sort=old This type of constant voltage generator led to the idea of parallel connection in Transformers, a milestone in ZBD Transformers (All other companies used the backward series connections). So this generator influenced the later development of transformers via the parallel power distribution concept. And I found a direct citation/reference to support that https://www.google.com/books/edition/Networks_of_Power/g07Q9M4agp4C?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=ganz+%22constant+voltage+generator%22&pg=PA96&printsec=frontcover
Photo of the page 96 also available here: https://i.ibb.co/7y3xrgK/image.png — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pharaph ( talk • contribs) 20:58, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
Title: Networks of Power Electrification in Western Society, 1880-1930 Author: Thomas Parke Hughes ISBN: 9780801846144 Page: 96 Published: March 1993 Format: Paperback Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press Language: English — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pharaph ( talk • contribs) 20:45, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
Again! It seems you did not even read the cited page of the Book! I will tell you which "circuits"(???) were used by Gaulard and Gibs Transformer. Please do not laugh, because it is ridiculously primitive and contraproductive: The voltage of their "transformer" (or whatever we can call it) was controlled by pushing in and pulling out its open iron core. Reference URL for that statement: https://web.archive.org/web/20231128081004/https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4500994
-- Pharaph ( talk) 21:53, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
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This article is appallingly biased. It does the usual Teslaphile nonsense of attributing the entire development of the AC power system to one man. The reality is that functioning commerical AC power systems existed before Tesla even arrived in the US, never mind starting work there as an electrical engineer. Tesla's main practical contribution was an efficient AC motor. Securiger 13:30, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Or call it something like, The War of the Currents Continues.
In the U.S. Edison's name and face are everywhere despite the fact that it was he who lost the War of the Currents to Westinghouse and Tesla. Edison is mythologized as a giant as the "inventor of the light bulb" as if there is only one thing that is a light bulb. Note that the Edison entry says he was the inventor of "a long lasting light bulb" which is quite different from what American school children are taught. Some may say this description of "a" light bulb that "was the primary type of bulb in use for a long time" (is this what "long-lasting" means?) is biased (It will be interesting to check to see if the Wiki editor who wrote that description has also contributed to Tesla articles.) U.S. children are not taught about the Current Wars or thet there was even a choice and for all they know, things are as they are thanks only to Edison. Edison's public, circus-style electrocutions of dogs, cats, and (one) elephant, along with his work on the electric chair, his conviction of the scientific correctness of his own ideas over those of a foreigner outweighing his own moral conviction that capital punishment is wrong, all all conveniently left out of American history and the U.S. indoctrination system. The Wikipedia Tesla entry may be accused by some of bias on Edison as inventor of "the" lightbulb, in that it includes a patent for a light bulb that needs no wires, practically identical to the screw-in type that is the only type most of us know. There are no rock bands in the U.S. called Edison, as far as my limited awareness extends. That a group of rock-and-rollers (young rebels. bucking the Establishment?) would choose to call themselves Tesla is only possible a unique identifier or useful as a means of differentiation from the masses in a world where Tesla himself has largely been erased from history in an almost Stalinist fashion. The U.S. government wouldn't hire him in his later years, he was dismissed as a Mad Scientist, and yet the government immediately seized all his papers and effects on the day he was discovered dead and declared them "top secret." I guess the Wikipedia entries on Tesla all immediately refer to his ethnicity as a Serb and then much later on get to the facts that he did most of his work in the U.S.; his patents were mostly issued by the U.S. government; his (U.S.) radio patent was upheld as valid (against a challenge by a rival) by the U.S. Supreme Court; he was a U.S. citizen, and died in the U.S. But they never say, as they should, right up top, "Tesla was an American scientist and engineer." Indeed he was. Why has the United States essentially refused to claim him as an American scientist? I believe this is due to prejudice against Eastern Europeans; Edison was Dutch and English, the two highest-status ethnicities in the U.S. If George Westinghouse had not bought Tesla's patents and processess and championed the cause; if Tesla himself had been the only opposition to Edison, we'd all be using DC power today. On Wikipedia the bias in favor of Tesla in related entries seems to be moved forward by those Tesla fans who just happen to favor the underdog and those who share his nationality, and finally, as mentioned in the talk pages here, those who say that ultimately the bias is borne out by history inasmuch as Tesla's arguments for AC ultimately won out. As for my own bias, I certainly like to side with the underdog, especially if he turns out to be right. On the other hand, Edison was and is a man worthy of admiration. But if anybody has any documented sources for a current bias debate or any historical explanation of the bias for or against Tesla or Edison, we could have a new section here. RUReady2Testify 20:34, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
Well it is a largely a choice made ages ago and it trickles down as an economy grows around it.
Name one home appliance which does not use a rectifier today
Take this example, the bulb, the fan and a couple of other things like maybe the radio were the only things which existed during the "War of currents" era. Who predicted the TV and the Comps and the Microwaves, all of which today internally have an SMPS and work on 48V DC, funnily :))
People jumpstarted on AC, and which is why electronics was born, to solve the problem around AC.. else that billion dollar industry would be dead, right? :)
Finally the choices are, from an instituional perspective about money and how to spread the wealth. My father saw the last remains of 240V DC while he grew up too, and those fans and those lights worked just as well
(hang the fact that the brushes were a problem... the regulators and the AC fans slowing down due to coil magnetization today are a probably a bigger problem).
So it is all about time and history, practically probably with solar cells today, DC will have a brighter future... —Preceding
unsigned comment added by
220.227.207.194 (
talk)
08:48, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
Someone ( User:cataclysm) recently took it upon himself to change the section where the basic advantage of AC over DC is discussed. Yes, AC is slightly more efficient than DC due to the effect mentioned, and high frequencies better than low - but this is NOT the principal reason why AC is used instead of DC. The overwhelming advantage of AC is that it can be transformed to a high voltage and high voltage/low current distribution will only suffer relatively minor power losses due to line resistance. Besides, this explantion can be understood easily by the layman (remember, our dear readers?) whereas the electron behaviour that transfers the charge is a far more esoteric effect (and wrongly given, in this context). Graham 06:29, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
In central business districts, DC was used very successfully for many years. A 120 or 120/240 volt network was installed below street level with a network vault outside major buildings. Heavy fused leads carried the current into the building to the building panel, and circuits from there went to all the floors to operate lights, the elevator, fans, pumps, toasters, vacuum cleaners, radios, and all manner of office equipment. A 10 story building might be thus served by 120/240 volt DC risers. A massive central battery maintained the current if the generators all failed simultaneously. Rotary converters were used to convert DC to AC or AC to DC or AC of 60 Hz to AC of lower frequency for railroads. Customers loved the continuity of the power, which remained on through power storms and failures of a transmission cable, since the transmission was redundant and the distribution had battery backup. Eventually, by the 1930's engineers at GE and Westinghouse developed Network Protector switches and relays which allowed the replacement of the DC network by a low voltage senondary AC network, at 120 volts per phase or 208 volts between phases. The protector closed automatically when the transformer was energized on the high side and the phase relationship was correct for power to lflow to the secondary low voltage grid. Continuity of power to the customer was achieved by the fact that four or more 12kv AC lines could be used to power several transformers each at various spots around the grid, which could be many blocks by many blocks. Such a grid might go for decades without even a momentary interruption, unlike normal AC service where a line can be interrupted by lightning or tree contact, or an underground line by cable failure. The grid would continue to be supplied by the remaining lines, and the network protector would open automatically to isolate the faulted primary. Secondary faults would literally burn clear, with 50,000 amps or so of available fault current. When the changeover from DC grid to AC grid was made, the customer did not notice any change for the most part. Universal motors worked on AC as well as DC, and mercury rectifiers were supplied to power big DC motors. With AC available, building transformer vaults were added as well as spot networks on various floors of high rises. This part of the history should be added to the article, I think, with suitable references. Most of the Wikipedia articles give the impression that DC distribution was abandoned by the end of the 19th century, which was certainly not the case for central business districts of many large cities around the world. Edison 21:36, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
As of late June, 2007, the article claims: "In January 2005, Consolidated Edison announced that it would cut off DC service to its remaining 1600 customers (all in Manhattan) by the end of the year." While literally true, that is not particularly interesting. As with many prior "final cutoffs," the one named was abandoned. At www.coned.com/sales/business/bus_elec.asp, a reader will find that Con Ed went for the gold instead, proposing surcharges ranging from $588 to $91,000 per year plus $0.0231 per kWh, approved in part. This was an increase from previous suracharges starting at $385 per month (Jay Romano, A push to unplug DC power, NY Times, March 18, 2001).
I wish the article title was War of the currents - would seem to be better English. -- Wtshymanski 20:42, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
Interesting article, It is funny how most modern power transmission text books always site the fact that DC is indeed more efficent over long distances. Funny how we go around in circles........
This article states that the first transmission of electric power between cities was from Niagara Falls to Buffalo in 1896, but that is incorrect. Power was transmitted from an AC power plant in Oregon City to Portland, Oregon, in 1889.
The Folsom Powerhouse in Folsom, CA is a National Mechanical Engineering Landmark and a National Historic Landmark for the longest 3-phase high-voltage AC transmission up to that time. It first transmitted to Sacramento, CA, 21 miles away, on July 13, 1895. While there is some dispute over whether this is actually the longest up to that time, it is certainly before Niagara Falls' 1896 date. Also--according to Wikipedia's article on General Electric, Thomson Houston and GE merged in 1892. This article strongly implies that the merger and GE's production of AC generators was after Niagara Falls powerplant. Not true! In fact, the Folsom Powerhouse (now a California State Historic Park) still has its 1895 AC generators. 207.114.244.5 ( talk) 18:10, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
I know the discussion over this article has died down but after stumbling upon it, I felt compelled to comment. This article does seem to be excessively favoring Tesla, (e.g. a section is called Edison's Propaganda). I would like for this article to perhaps be examined by electrical experts because there seems to be no other way to untangle and remove the issue of bias without affecting the article.-- Jonthecheet 02:41, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
Tesla was not closely involved in the electrification of Niagara Falls. He sold Westinghouse his patent and had a Chief Engineer title, but spent his time experimenting with high voltage , high frequency effects in his New York lab. Westinghouse was producing AC at around 130 hz when Tesla sold him the motor patent, and Tesla could not get his motors to work satisfactorily at that frequency. But to his followers, he is the only person to ever touch AC.
Edison
21:44, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
Have you checked out some better references? Empires of light is ok, but notthe best bio on Tesla. J. D. Redding 19:42, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
Who owns Tesla's patents today? GE?
The patents have all lapsed. They are a century old.
Westinghouse owned them. Edison 21:44, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
This article is biased to those who favour Edison over Tesla and I would imagine the same bias exists from the Edison angle. It will never go away as the AC vs.DC debate is a microcosm of the Tesla vs. Edison debate. There is a jealousy between both camps. Arguments can be made for both currents when different factors are considered but the above dribble is no more than a Pete Rose vs. Ty Cobb debate. There is no doubt that AC existed before Tesla even hit America, however, he revolutionized it by catapulting it into what it is today, and for that, it will always be tagged to his name due to assimilation. So, to put into laymans terms for all you EEs who chose to use Wikipedia as a forum to vent, the fridge, like AC, was a good idea, but not until the first beer was pulled out. I suggest you put your textbooks away and make your fridges a great invention. Relax!!! This is Wikipedia!
Hey, I'm doing a project on Edison, and every source I find on the Edison vs. Tesla conflict is extremely biased towards Tesla. Can anyone recommend some good sources to check out on the subject? 68.54.117.60 ( talk) 23:59, 17 September 2008 (UTC)Savanna
Is there any energy domain treatise of transmission line theory? I remember there were few out there.
Edison would have had AC banned I believe. But it is ironic that he had to fight against the gas companies, during the early years, to get electricity up and running.
It is also ironic that all "useable" equipment is DC, wonder if "gas" was indeed better than sitting and computing power factors and impedence losses!
Any chances of adding 2 capacitors in series and tapping the load across each "half" to step down the voltage?
Seems to work like the fridge for me ;o)
well well why is it that all grids lock back on DC? there must be a reason for this.
Could someone list the specific points in a bullet list or numbered list so some resolution can be done about the npov tag? Otherwise it should be removed. 204.56.7.1 18:58, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
Who named it "War of Currents"? Being capitalized I presume it has been labelled as a proper name by someone, which means it should have a reference and be explained. If a wikipedian made it up then renaming should be discussed. Cburnett 05:26, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
Is it just me or is this a bit odd sounding: in an article about the War of Currents the second line is “Several undercurrents lay beneath this rivalry.” Could we change that? Maybe? -- Dolphinn 21:11, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
"Since metal conducting wires have a certain resistance, some power will be wasted as heat in the wires. This power loss is given by P = I2R"
P = I2R shows that if we say double the current, the power loss more than doubles. Which equation shows the effect of increasing the voltage? Doing some rearranging I came up with P = V2/R, is this correct? If so it would show mathematically that doubling the voltage does not lead to as much power loss as doubling the curent. However this only follows if R > 1 and I have no idea what typical values for R would be. Have I got this completely wrong? Shorvath 05:56, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
Interesting, but take this perspective: let V be the rms AC voltage /or flat DC voltage, R be the resistance and X be the impedence. Hence the actual power used Active power = V.I.cos(phase) = V^2 .R /(R^2+X^2) R/(R^2+x^2) being I cos(phase) now if the voltage source was DC power consumed = V^2/R < V^2.R/(R^2+X^2) as (R^2+X^2)/R > R So is it correct to say that DC would actually consume less power i.e if there was no impedence to worry about, (other than the transient) a DC transmission line would actually use less power? As far as current goes and conductor rating goes, for any high voltage you need a thicker wire till it melts, however assume one was to send rms value(220V) DC instead of AC one would need the same type of cables and yet experience less power loss? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Alokdube ( talk • contribs) 07:07, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
Skin effect is a function of frequency only. 60 Hz leads to 8.5 mm as characteristical depth of current flow in a conductor of copper. Only hollow tubes make sense for high-current applications at 60 Hz instead of massive cylindrical rods (wires), if more than (+/-) 17 mm diameter would be necessary for a fitting conducting cross section area. (Copper, eventually silverplated) litz wire make sense only for frequencies above 100 kHz where skin depth decreases to 0.2 mm and less, and it works only if all its parallel tiny filaments are isolated from each other, usually by enamel. -- Helium4 ( talk) 10:13, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
I would still relook the VI cos phase approach. Remember we are interested in transmitting power from A to B, so the actual power is the active component. While the reactive component is available in the line and can be dissipated out over time, the actual measure is "how much active was transmitted". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 115.99.182.242 ( talk) 12:19, 12 October 2015 (UTC)
Could someone list the specific points for cleanup? It would help to rectify the situation. If not listed n the next several days, the tag should be removed. J. D. Redding 19:43, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
List of citations needed. Place citations under bullet. J. D. Redding 19:55, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
Edison, a proponent of DC, called AC, the killer current, and was a proponent of using AC for electrocutions, a process that Edison called 'Westinghousing'. Westinghouse, a proponent of AC, thought that the condemed should be put to death with DC, a process that Westinghouse called 'Edisoning'. CorvetteZ51 12:59, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
It says somewhere in here that underground transmission voltages are lower than overhead transmission voltages because of insulation issues. That's not really true; the voltages are about the same in most cases. It's true that underground transmission can cost more, and it can't be overloaded in an emergency as much as overhead open wires can be.
Nobody missed DC in the cities for several reasons. The most interesting was that the leakage currents--they're unavoidable even in carefully-engineered systems--caused great corrosion in other buried utilities. This is still a problem in places where there are street railways powered by DC.
I think the discussion of the advantages of AC vs. DC in every conceivable electrical device is, well, unnecessary. Automobiles use DC because there's a battery to deal with. Telephones use DC because they'd sound awfully funny with AC power. Electrical substations use 120v DC (supplied with substantial lead-acid battery banks) to run their circuit breakers.
One advantage of Edison's DC system not mentioned in the article was that you could use a bank of storage batteries as both a back-up supply and to adjust the voltage of the system. Both were common practices in the early days. (Now, it looks like AEP will be using sodium-sulfur batteries to back up its transmission system. Amazing how it all comes back around, this time courtesy of high-power electronic devices. Kinsler33 07:11, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
I just removed an AfD from this article which was added by an editor with no other edits. The stated reason is in my opinion inaccurate - while there is extensive mention of Tesla, it's in context and the primary dispute was between Edison and Westinghouse. The article is linked from dozens of other articles. -- Wtshymanski 14:36, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
Westinghouse was using much of tesla's work. The true fight was between Tesla and Edison. Tesla was backed by Westinghouse. J. D. Redding 14:37, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
Look at [2] and see if we can't fix some of the reasons this didn't make FA in 2004! -- Wtshymanski ( talk) 21:01, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
Did anyone read that article in the Economist a while ago about how a DC grid might be the way of the future? They claim DC can now be used to more effectively transmit power long distances (voltage can be effectively stepped up) and works well with things like wind mills and "smart grids". Should that be mentioned in the article? That there is some speculation that ultimately the Edison design may win out in some places? TastyCakes ( talk) 19:58, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
Is there any source for this statement: Edison's series of animal executions peaked with the filmed electrocution of Topsy, a Coney Island circus elephant. The event ist dated 1903, 15 years after the invention of the electric chair. All patents, including that for the transformator, expired earlier und The New York Edison Co. obviously was 1903 not in the ownership of Thomas Alva Edison. Source: a brief history of con edison
In my opinion, there is no relationship to the war of currents. it was in the interest of the owners of luna park, coney island, to get publicity and it was in the interest of The Edison Manufacturing Co., a film producing company of Thomas A. Edison, to get spectacular pictures for their business with the kinetoscope.
Furthermore, I cant't see any prove for a responibility of Mr. Edison for the execution of the elephant. It was a descison of the owners of luna park. A New York studio of one of his companies took pictures, that's all.
Source of the Event, Thomas Alva Edison is not mentioned: Online-Archiv The New York Times: CONEY ELEPHANT KILLED; Topsy Overcome with Cyanide of Potassium and Electricity. 5. Januar 1903 -- Hgn-p ( talk) 23:40, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
I'm curious, and I'm not sure if this would belong in this article or another article, how the remnant DC customers of Con Ed dealt with use of DC. Did they have to buy converters for their appliances that required AC? Did they get a hold of very special models of appliances that worked with DC? I mean, what happened when they went to the store and bought a new stereo, then tried to plug it into their outlet at home? 63.87.189.17 ( talk) 16:43, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
Speaking of Modern Use ...
To this day, major telecommunications companies still use DC to power their support systems. It would be interesting to see a technical update from one of the major telecoms. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.254.4.6 ( talk) 19:15, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
If superconductors ever become a practical means of transmitting power over long distances, we'll probably end up going back to DC. As the article mentions, the reason we use AC now is because AC has lower power losses over such distances. With superconductors, though, the power loss for DC is zero, so this isn't a factor. Trying to run an AC current through a superconductor would lead to nonzero power loss since all AC currents act like antennas to some respect, radiating energy.
Perhaps we should mention this possibility in the article somewhere? Stonemason89 ( talk) 03:31, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
I have a major problem with this statement not being supported DIRECTLY by the source cited:
"Edison carried out a campaign to discourage the use of alternating current, including spreading disinformation on fatal AC accidents, publicly killing animals, and lobbying against the use of AC in state legislatures. Edison directed his technicians, primarily Arthur Kennelly and Harold P. Brown, to preside over several AC-driven killings of animals, primarily stray cats and dogs but also unwanted cattle and horses."
The source cited is pieced together rather than directly stating that his technicians presided over these killings, and therefore should not be used to back up this statement. The only things that I gathered from the source as presented were that they got their directions weekly, and the State of New York electrocuted animals for testing, not that Edison directed them to preside over the testing. Monsieurdl mon talk 12:34, 7 October 2011 (UTC)
The source cited for this sentence of War of Currents#Early transmission analysis:
is "Wiggers, C. J. et al. 1940". I expected to find "Wiggers" in a Bibliograpy, or maybe further reading, but it is not there.! This type of issue seems to come up regularly on the Ref desks, and I remember taking part in such discussion as an IP editor and finding sources. Has there ever been a locateable source for this statement? (though it seems reasonable, it may not be true.) And
wp:verifiability requires it to be reliably sourced.
Oh dear, Wiggers is also cited at
Ventricular fibrillation too (ref #22), but no title or anything else to identify the 'source'.
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of War of Currents's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.
Reference named "Bláthy_HPO":
{{
cite web}}
: Check date values in: |accessdate=
(
help)I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 11:09, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
I removed (most of) the paragraph ( diff) on "undercurrents" in a "rivalry" between Tesla and Edison in the "War of Currents" because it put forward a premise that this was simply a Tesla/Edison thing and tried to verify it by citing a series of anecdotal stories about Tesla when he worked for Edison. The claim that there was a direct rivalry during the "War of Currents" is unverified. Also in the section was an unverified claim that Tesla was a partner with Westinghouse. Westinghouse licensed Tesla's patents and hired him as a consultant, but that is not a "partnership". Fountains of Bryn Mawr ( talk) 15:44, 31 August 2012 (UTC)
Moved this section to talk. Wikipedia does not contain analysis per WP:NOT#OR. Contains unreferenced claims such as Tesla made it "clear that AC was the future". Large parts of this section also seem to be redundant to other article content. Fountains of Bryn Mawr ( talk) 16:23, 3 July 2013 (UTC)
This need to be restored. User:Fountains Seems to be removing relevant info from articles. -- J. D. Redding 12:56, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
Lead needs a summary. Badly ... -- J. D. Redding 05:50, 28 July 2013 (UTC)
So what was happening in Europe? They had some DC systems, too - who were the players there, was there more than just AEG ( which at its start was an Edison patent licensee, but rapidly went its own way) ? Tons of stuff on the Hungarians but no context, as usual. -- Wtshymanski ( talk) 02:39, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
In an edit of 18:33, 16 November 2011 a paragraph was added re Bankside's generation of 200VDC for Fleet Street presses, and that its closure was precipitated by the move of presses out of Fleet Street. While parts of this may be true (there's no reason to assume that Bankside didn't generate a small 200VDC feed for Fleet Street), I think its inclusion is highly dubious. All the citations which I've seen, independent of Wikipedia, suggest that Bankside was grid-connected, and a considerable plant. A tiny proportion of the hundreds of megawatts which it generated would have been consumed by presses, and it seems very doubtful that 300MW was ever fed by 200VDC to the other side of the river (one and a half mega amps, anyone?). If it were, you'd expect to see it mentioned on the Bankside Power Station page. Independent works suggest that the station was closed by a change in the economic fuel mix for power generation, which fits better historically with 1981 than the later abandoning of Fleet Street (eg Wapping was 1986).
It is possible that the station was run down to a low power only a 200V DC feed in its later years, but also sounds rather odd to maintain a large oil-powered plant station for such purposes and there's no evidence of this, either, in any of the reminiscences and the like you find online of workers at the plant.
None of this is conclusive, but I smell a massive fish here. Either it's nonsense or remarkable enough to need further elaboration. Could someone check? 79.65.132.47 ( talk) 00:30, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
I see no references stating Topsy was part of the War of Currents. Edison's (General Electric) was AC in 1903, and it was not run by Edison any more. Also IMdb is not a source. "Topsy: The Startling Story of the Crooked-tailed Elephant" by Michael Daly page 319 also states this was not part of the War of Currents. Method of execution was chosen by owners, Frederick Thompson and Elmer Dundy. Fountains of Bryn Mawr ( talk) 00:35, 26 June 2014 (UTC)
quote
|
---|
Edison’s DC standard was rapidly slipping into irrelevancy, but the Old Man still had some fight left in him. Even though General Electric had become just another firm hawking the “deadly” alternating current, Edison longed to fight another round. Seeing DC all but lose the war of currents was a rare and unsettling defeat for the Wizard, and Edison kept a sharp eye out for an opportunity to stick it to his AC opponents. Early in 1903, he got his chance. The situation was appropriately circus-like” Edison agreed to lend his technical expertise to the public electrocution of a rouge Coney Island elephant named Topsy. |
Binksternet, you're more familiar with the history of this article than I am. Petri Krohn and Reddi seem to think it underwent some revisionist rot in the last year or two. Would you say that's a fair assessment?
MrScorch6200, Ɱ, and Fountains of Bryn Mawr, instead of spending all summer re-inventing the wheel, how would you feel about reverting to the earlier version that many people seemed to have been happy with? If it's a little over-heavy on the Tesla lore we can moderate it, but it might save us a considerable amount of time.-- Atlantictire ( talk) 03:47, 26 June 2014 (UTC)
Fountains of Bryn Mawr is keen to remove unsourced material. I'm afraid we have a lot of unsourced information in the article that will render it unintelligible or POV should it be eliminated. I'm busy today, but I can start this tomorrow. Help would be greatly appreciated.-- Atlantictire ( talk) 19:53, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
I think we need a sub-page that describes the details of the Edison DC systems. Such as, the outlets and the different voltages used. The article says there was a different voltage used for motors, but does not say what it was. Z gin der 2014-07-04T14:46:33Z
The article states "Low-frequency (50–60 Hz) alternating currents can be more dangerous than similar levels of DC since the alternating fluctuations can cause the heart to lose coordination, inducing ventricular fibrillation, a deadly heart rhythm that must be corrected immediately." and then cites as reference something offline from 1940. Without wading into the modern dispute about AC, health hazards from EM fields, etc, and speaking only from the POV of a 'War' which was almost certainly over by 1940, should this statement be allowed to remain? I am hesitant to do it myself as I see prior discussion about this bit of the article. Tinfoil666 ( talk) 18:22, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
High energy DC power transmission is currently in use as documented in the wiki article: /info/en/?search=High-voltage_direct_current
A few clear examples for the Pacific NW:
http://www.bpa.gov/transmission/Projects/line-projects/Pages/PDCI-Upgrade-Project.aspx
As used in this article Power Transmission appears to be talking about what is typically considered to be Power Distribution. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mr. KnowItAllToo ( talk • contribs) 15:33, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
This article states: "Edison opposed capital punishment, but his desire to disparage the system of alternating current led to the invention of the electric chair." This is contradicted by both the Electric Chair and William Kemmler articles that state that the electric chair was invented by Buffalo, New York dentist Alfred Southwick, who did not appear to be influenced by Edison in any way. 192.249.47.204 ( talk) 19:04, 1 September 2015 (UTC)
Major expansion/reorganization of the "Current Wars", bare outline expanded to cover the main aspects of the War of Currents, and section moved up (its the main topic of the article). Lead edited to summarize body content. Other material left mostly as is but I am noticing the "Remnant and existent DC systems" section is off topic i.e. not about the 1888-1892 War of Currents, its a "History of DC section" so in the wrong article, it should probably be moved to History of electric power transmission or Direct current. Fountains of Bryn Mawr ( talk) 03:28, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
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"Hybrid and all-electric vehicle propulsion with internal power-supply"
This is highly misleading. Although of course the HV battery is DC, the power distribution level e.g. of a Toyota Prius isn't, and definitely not propulsion. The energy transfer grid of Prius and similar hybrid and/or electric cars operate at three-phase AC, and definitely the motorgenerators do. Roughly: Battery 200 V DC, transfer 400 V three-phase AC, motorgenerators 600 V three-phase AC.
Electric DC motors are inefficient and high-maintenance, single phase AC motors are inefficient. 134.247.251.245 ( talk) 14:42, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
I was just casually browsing one fine evening, quite curious about this topic. But the bulky lead/lede just put me off immediately, sorry. It should be shorter and more to-the-point, IMHO. I've put up the relevant template - hoping things can be trimmed. I might find some time & work on it myself for a little bit, but in the mean time, let us try & improve nonetheless... 16:34, 21 January 2019 (UTC) Feer 16:36, 21 January 2019 (UTC)
I get that we don't normally capitalise stuff, but googling it seems to indicate it's a proper noun in multiple references. In 2017 Dicklyon seems to have taken it upon himself to just rename the article and heading without any obvious discussion at all (unless I missed it, which is possible, it could even have been discussed on another page).
I mean it's not a general thing, there's not multiple current wars. Or are we planning to remove capitalisation from stuff like 'Wars of the Roses' too??? It all seems a bit odd. With all due respect I think this got messed up. Everyone makes mistakes, but what do others think? GliderMaven ( talk) 05:18, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
Per
MOS:CAPS, WP relies on empirical evidence to determine capitalisation: only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia
. This is done on a case-by-case basis, so capitalisation of
Hundred Years’ War and
Wars of the Roses are separate cases for which the evidence supports capitalisation. Coining a phrase does not make the phrase a proper name nor confer upon it capitalisation ipso facto and definitions of war are not limited to armed conflict; hence, a war of words. The phrase is descriptive and thereby does not satisfy one theoretical requisites of what a proper name is. Regards,
Cinderella157 (
talk)
05:23, 5 January 2020 (UTC)
It takes only a few seconds to prove that sources are not consistently capitalizing this:
[5],
[6],
[7],
[8],
[9],
[10],
[11],
[12],
[13],
[14],
[15],
[16],
[17],
[18],
[19], all from my first page of search results. It's clear that capitalizing it is fairly common, yet: A) It's most common in entertainment and news publications, in reviews of a recent film about this, and both are genres apt to over-capitalize anything when in doubt, most especially when there's any kind of entertainment-industry connection. B) However, even many of those publications do not capitalize this phrase or its variants (except
The Current War in reference to the film); if the "bastion of over-capping" isn't over-capping as much as some people above think they are, then this obviously does not rise to the
WP:MOSCAPS and
WP:NCCAPS standard of not applying capital letters unless the sources do so with near consistency. The clincher is the Google Scholar results: the phrase is much more frequently lower-case, even in titles (academic journals tend to use sentence case like Wikipedia does)
[20]. This case is basically the same as
war on women and
war on poverty; it's a catchy and polarizing and hyperbolic phrase, but not a proper name. See in particular
Talk:War on cancer#Requested move 16 November 2019 (a mass RM), and
Talk:War on drugs/Archive 2#Requested move 24 September 2017. That last had a weak claim to being a proper name, because of "official" use of the phrase by various governmental bodies who tended to capitalize it. Nevertheless, many sources did not, so WP does not.
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼
23:31, 5 January 2020 (UTC)
Recently Liltender has been repeatedly [21], [22] adding the statement
I think this statement gives WP:UNDUE WEIGHT to the three engineers ZBD, as the 'divided' or laminated iron core was developed over the previous 50 years by a number of researchers:
I'm still asking you, where are your proofs for these relevations? None of your links can show your statements. Divided iron wires are not equal with laminated iron plates (the real lamination). Only plate form is very effective, iron wires can reduce eddy current only slightly. So the real laminated iron plates (which were effective) were invented by the ZBD team.--
Liltender (
talk)
22:07, 12 March 2020 (UTC)
Not all induction colis are transformers, but all transformers are induction colils. I suggest take a research about the pictures of your above mentioned patents.--
Liltender (
talk)
07:25, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
Induction colils are not automatically transformers. Induction as a phenomenon was discovered long before the suspection of the idea of AC current, and itself the idea of the transformation of AC current. So early experiments of the induction coils did not use the coils to change any voltage of the AC, so they did not TRANSFORM the voltage!!! In short, these early induction coils were not even used for the transformation of AC! Ganz company have never built a single Direct Current system, when American, British or German companies produced exclusively DC systems. The first commercial AC power station statred to build by the GANZ company in Rome and Vienna in 1885, when Westinghouse and any other companies had still no viable AC solutions. (in 1886 Stanley of Westinghouse still experimented with open-core non laminated "transformers". See his patent from 1886. Moreover, other companies had no clue about parallel circuits. They used series circuit systems.-- Liltender ( talk) 15:06, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
PLEASE read that book:
Title United States Congressional Serial Set, Volume 5795 Contributor United States. Congress Publisher U.S. Government Printing Office, 1910
PAGE: 44-50
LINK: https://books.google.com/books?id=B-RGAQAAIAAJ&pg=RA3-PA45&dq=austria-hungary+%22000+horsepower%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjf77LL1vfnAhWwmIsKHdQqDbIQ6AEISDAD#v=onepage&q=austria-hungary%20%22000%20horsepower%22&f=false — Preceding unsigned comment added by Liltender ( talk • contribs) 15:14, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
Moreover, Gaulard and Gibbs did not use their induction coils to change the voltage of their system, but they increased voltage with usage of series circuit connection!!!! You can read about it here:
"Gaulard and Gibbs created high voltage by utilizing connection in series, rather than changing voltages through the use of their transformer." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Liltender ( talk • contribs) 17:05, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
The Power Makers: Steam, Electricity, and the Men Who Invented Modern America
By Maury Klein PAGE: 220
Before the ZBD team nobody understand the Transformer principle: Vp/Vs = Np/Ns
So earlier inventors did not use it to transform the AC current. They decreased the voltage by decrasing the efficiency of the device. So they simply decreased the magnetic induction, thus they decreased the Voltage and the amperage of the system at the same time!!!! Crazy and very stupid, isn't it?-- Liltender ( talk) 17:09, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
Sorry, but even modern researchers also use old scientific gazettes books and magazines, which were close to the disputed era. It is called original source.-- Liltender ( talk) 19:22, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
researchers" errr, @ Liltender:, we are not researchers, please read WP:CCPOL. Fountains of Bryn Mawr ( talk) 19:37, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
I mean original old gazettes and publications can decide most of the debates among experts. What is your problem with Maury Klein? He is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Rhode Island. Are you a university professor too, whose opinion is relevant on this field, or you are just a typical Wikipedia layman editor without any high academic career, who tries to dispute the opinion of professors?-- Liltender ( talk) 20:22, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
First, you must prove that induction coils before the ZBD (not transformers) were used for the up/down tranformation of voltage, and about the existence of the knowledge that how the number of turns of windings of the primer and secunder coils can effect the voltage. Of course you can't. As in the example of Gaulard and Gibbs, they make adjustable (movable) iron cores in their coils, which can reduce the whole EMF and magnetism, thus they decreased voltage with the brutal descreasing of the efficiency.-- Liltender ( talk) 07:34, 17 March 2020 (UTC)
First concentrate on the question, did real transformers existed before ZBD, which up/down transformed AC. As far as I know, the pre-ZBD era induction coils (they are not real transformer) lowered the voltage by paceing the iron core further from the coils, thus they decreased efficiancy and EMF to lower the voltage. That induction coils were not transformers.-- Liltender ( talk) 09:51, 29 March 2020 (UTC)
After adding the Nikola Tesla template, where this article is listed, to this page, and receiving a revert with language about Tesla being irrelevant to the topic by the time of the current war, I had a closer reading of the article and talk page. Wikipedia's present take on Tesla's influence on the topic has me thinking, at least on paper for a few seconds, if I saw a fake film about this last year, which centered on Tesla, Edison, and Westinghouse (remember going to the movies? popcorn, a screen the size of a mountain, and maskless people everywhere actually opening their mouths to laugh). Finding the lack of Tesla in this article strange, and having little more than a layman's knowledge of Tesla (including the Niagara power station), I thought I'd bring the question here: Should this article be removed from the {{ Nikola Tesla}} template? If not, well, then the template should be placed back on the page. And save your film ticket stubs, as your grandchildren will sit on your lap at a distance and ask through their masks, "Gramps, did Tesla really invent movies, the jet airplane, and Covid-19?" and you will answer yes, yes, of course he did. Randy Kryn ( talk) 00:00, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
Haven't seen the movie and I would take it with a grain of salt. Poly-phase motors and related power systems (a-la Tesla) were a pipe dream all through the late 1880s and 1890s, and Westinghouse's investors knew it (almost pulled his plug). Westinghouse's potential customers were not about to go out and buy all new Tesla induction motors even if they were available, they wanted power for their already existing arc lights, light bulbs, single phase AC motors, and DC motors (there were street cars out there that needed power and that wouldn't change for 100 years). So the real invention that made the Westinghouse system feasible was the rotary converter, it powered everyone. It ain't sexy and it ain't Tesla, but it got the job done (would make for a boring Tesla movie though ;)). Fountains of Bryn Mawr ( talk) 19:29, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
User:Fountains of Bryn Mawr has a tendency to remove the inventions and discoveries of non-English language speaking words. He is an anglo-centric editor in the wiki. He removed the invention of the constant voltage AC generator by the Ganz Company in 1883, despite of the excellent references.-- Pharaph ( talk) 19:04, 26 November 2023 (UTC)
In 1883 the Ganz Works invented the constant voltage alternator, ('voltage source, voltage intensive' systems [VSVI] ) which became a determinant milestone of the alternator technology, [1] that could produce a stated output voltage, regardless of the value of the actual load. [2]
-- Pharaph ( talk) 06:55, 27 November 2023 (UTC)
So... you didn't bother to read the notice about WP:NPA? Fountains of Bryn Mawr ( talk) 14:17, 27 November 2023 (UTC)
Paper does not cover Westinghouse or the War of the Currents. Fountains of Bryn Mawr ( talk) 01:27, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
It seems you did not even read the short essay on the link, how can we discuss the topic in rational way, if you don't want/ refuse to read anything I did show you?
PAGE 13: "The chief electrician of Edison Central Station, Pearl Street, New York City, J. W. Lieb visited the Ganz Works in 1885 and was filled with enthusiasm; he urged the Edison Electric Light Company to buy the patent rights to manufacture the Ganz transformers in the United States, but the company, at that time, did not realize the commercial importance of the invention. Only one year later, in 1886, was an agreement arrived at for an option concerning the manufacture for twenty thousand dollars."
And Westinghouse and Gaulard and Gibbs followed the trednd of Ganz Company (Ganz made already AC power plants based on their ZBD patents, when the Gaulard Gibs sent a modified Transformer to the Americans:
Page 13: "George Westinghouse took a different view on the importance of transformers. It was Pantaleoni who emphatically advised Westinghouse to take up work in alternating current. The Gaulard-Gibbs patents were therefore bought, and the first "secondary generators" in the U. S. arrived in November 1885; they were, however, fitted with closed magnetic circuits already."
When Blathy asked Gaulard in Turin exhibition in 1884, "why did not used closed iron core" Gaulard replied: "It would have been harmful and uneconomical" Reference:
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4500994
This article also explain that Gaulard-Gibs design did not even use the principle of different turn ratios in the primary and secondary coils to change the voltage, the turn ratio of primary and secondary coils were 1:1. Why? Because their open-core design decreased voltage (down step) by increasing the phyysical distance between primary and secondary coils (type of brutal waste of energy). So it did not used the classic transformer principle of different turn ratios of the primary and secondary coils.
Quote from the reference text: "The voltage was controlled by pushing in and pulling out this iron core" -- Pharaph ( talk) 08:21, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
The main problem is Stanley, he is falsely indicated as the inventor or important contributor of the Transformer. Copying other people's already published inventions/innovations is not real invention, it is just imitation. Does Stanley have any proofs for his priority related to transformers? No he has not. What did he actually invent in transformers which was not patented and published earlier by others? He is nothing more than a debunked American (false) iventor-hero of AC undergoing serious myth making in the posterior-- Pharaph ( talk) 19:41, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
We are speaking about this generator, it used the new AC parallel connection of utilization loads. US Patent 284,110A See the patent: https://patents.google.com/patent/US284110A/en?q=(zipernowsky)&oq=zipernowsky+&sort=old This type of constant voltage generator led to the idea of parallel connection in Transformers, a milestone in ZBD Transformers (All other companies used the backward series connections). So this generator influenced the later development of transformers via the parallel power distribution concept.-- Pharaph ( talk) 20:34, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
We are speaking about this generator, it used the new AC parallel connection of utilization loads. US Patent 284,110A See the patent: https://patents.google.com/patent/US284110A/en?q=(zipernowsky)&oq=zipernowsky+&sort=old This type of constant voltage generator led to the idea of parallel connection in Transformers, a milestone in ZBD Transformers (All other companies used the backward series connections). So this generator influenced the later development of transformers via the parallel power distribution concept. And I found a direct citation/reference to support that https://www.google.com/books/edition/Networks_of_Power/g07Q9M4agp4C?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=ganz+%22constant+voltage+generator%22&pg=PA96&printsec=frontcover
Photo of the page 96 also available here: https://i.ibb.co/7y3xrgK/image.png — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pharaph ( talk • contribs) 20:58, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
Title: Networks of Power Electrification in Western Society, 1880-1930 Author: Thomas Parke Hughes ISBN: 9780801846144 Page: 96 Published: March 1993 Format: Paperback Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press Language: English — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pharaph ( talk • contribs) 20:45, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
Again! It seems you did not even read the cited page of the Book! I will tell you which "circuits"(???) were used by Gaulard and Gibs Transformer. Please do not laugh, because it is ridiculously primitive and contraproductive: The voltage of their "transformer" (or whatever we can call it) was controlled by pushing in and pulling out its open iron core. Reference URL for that statement: https://web.archive.org/web/20231128081004/https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4500994
-- Pharaph ( talk) 21:53, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
References