AC or DC Shock: Which kills? [RE-wrenches]

[Robert Warren]

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Bill,
 You brought up Edison and his public fight for DC transmission lines. 
He certainly was vehement in stating his case that DC was safer than AC, 
but I seriously doubt that he was more informed than Nicola Tesla-- with 
whom he was competing to run the first ever long distance transmission 
line from the very first hydro-electric plant designed and personally 
build by Nicola Tesla--with funds from George Westinghouse, a banker. 
Tesla won out in the end, and Westinghouse Inc. installed the first ever 
AC street lights to light up a city, NYC, from the first power plant at 
Niagara Falls. I believe this was around 1895 or so. 
 Edison used to regularly hire kids to kidnap cats and dogs from other 
neighborhoods (paying them something like 10 cents per dog or cat) and 
he would hold “public executions” in the streets of New York City where 
he would demonstrate how AC power to a pet-sized electric chair would 
painfully electrocute the unfortunate victim of the day. The cat or dog 
would yowl excruciatingly, as he purposely kept the current low enough 
to not really kill it right away. He preferred to stretch out the 
torture (and the yowl factor) for up to an hour, as he got lots of “good 
press” in the New York Times about this. 
 The truth is, either DC or AC power can kill in an electric chair. 
Tesla was a true genius, the true father of AC power, and he gave us 
countless inventions, including the first ever AC motor, AC generator, 
all kinds of early switchgear, and later on, radio (Marconi studied with 
Tesla at his lab in NYC) and radar. 
There is a great biography of Tesla, “Lighting in his Hands”, which also 
describes how in Colorado Springs, Co, Tesla gave public displays of his 
own artificial lighting, with him firmly grasping a ball-tipped 
lightning rod and conducting hundred’s of thousands of volts across the 
surface of his skin (too high to enter the body, he claimed). I have a 
seen photo of him doing this, but don’t recall if it was in the above 
biography, or another. 
By the way, there is also a Tesla Society, which archives his many 
patents and “way-out” inventions, such as “wireless AC power 
transmission”. I would love to see a few good wrenches get behind some 
of his patents which have yet to be adapted and modernized. 
Sincerely,
Robert Warren


Bill Brooks wrote:
> 
> Mark,
> 
> From my OSHA safety training, AC has a few major problems:
> 
> 1.)at about 20 mAmps your lungs can paralyze causing suffocation (the 
> most
> common cause of death with electricity).
> 
> 2.)at about 70-80 mAmps through your heart, your heart will go into
> fibrillation and  you are dead in a few minutes without a defibrillator.
> 
> 3.)at higher currents, nerves are permanently damaged and muscle tissue
> begins to cook causing death if it happens in the right places.
> 
> Of the thee listed above, the first two are related to frequency of ac. 
> The
> third is common to both dc and ac because the current is doing the 
> damage
> not the frequency. AC can cause your muscles to constrict, as pointed 
> out,
> making it difficult to let go, causing longer exposure to the current, 
> and
> therefore more damage because of the ac current.
> 
> DC is safer than ac from a shock and electrocution point of view (Edison
> made this case passionately), but dc is definitely a greater fire hazard
> since an arc has a constant voltage applied to it, rather than with ac 
> where
> the voltage collapses 120 a second on an arc.
> 
> Look in OSHA safety manuals for electric shock hazards.
> 
> Bill.
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mark Robinson [mailto:Mark at TheEnergyGrid.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, July 21, 2004 8:16 AM
> To: RE-wrenches at topica.com
> Subject: AC or DC Shock: Which is worse? OUCH! [RE-wrenches]
> 
> 
> 
> 



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robertwarren at mail.com

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