04th Feb 2009
The original French “resistance”?
Nowadays, you can’t get a bill from the electric company without an accompanying insert on ways to use less energy in your house. Insulate! Unplug computers! Buy EnergyStar Certified appliances! Considering the antiquated grid structure and long certification process required to build new plants to increase capacity, companies have little choice but to try to decrease demand by teaching consumers to use less power.
Contrast that modern reality with this 1937 concept, apparently actually used in France.
By pressing an electric switch, radio listeners may express approval of a current radio program. Holding down a small switch attached to the base of a small lamp placed near the radio, the increased current drain is shown at the local power plant or substation.
The power company raked in extra money by convincing people to draw extra power and telling them it was some sort of rating system. And convincing them this “special” button would be distinguishable from, say, turning on a light or using an electric toaster. Edison’s approach was all wrong — if he wanted people to buy DC rather than AC electricity, he should have sold them all thoroughly useless gizmos like this, that worked only on HIS special DC current. At worst, he wouldn’t be remembered as somebody who electrocuted an elephant.
Article via Modern Mechanix.
Poor, poor Topsy.
Granted, she’d killed three people, but that was after suffering years of abuse. The poor animal.
That elephant footage is just sick.
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