this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2023
92 points (100.0% liked)
Asklemmy
43950 readers
672 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Thomas Edison famously tried to prove that AC current was more dangerous than his DC current. (Edison was pushing DC current for long distance transmission and as home electrical service.) To do this he electruted Topsy the elephant in front of an audience. When the AC current wouldn't kill Topsy he switched to DC current and zapped her to death.
I don't know that this one really counts. First, as stewie said, Edison didn't electrocute Topsy (though he did film it).
But anyway, what "stupid prizez" did Edison win? An enormous pile of money and immortal fame and admiration?
Although Edison was a complete ass, and did lasting damage to the world by teaming up with JP Morgan to extinguish Nikola Tesla's work, he wasn't the one who electrocuted Topsy.
Although Edison was a complete ass, and did lasting damage to the world by teaming up with JP Morgan to extinguish Nikola Tesla's work, he wasn't the one who electrocuted Topsy.
I mean… if you use DC digitally (I.e turning it on and off making it binary code), it really is a cleaner information transmission than AC. But I doubt that’s what Edison had in mind.
Although Edison was a complete ass, and did lasting damage to the world by teaming up with JP Morgan to extinguish Nikola Tesla's work, he wasn't the one who electrocuted Topsy.