Extra Credit on Ethics and business ~ Desire’ B

 I believe that good business practices do not always involve ethical behavior. I mean think about it, if someone was selling the exact same thing as you, you are going to do whatever it takes to get people to buy from your store. You are going to advertise about how much better yours is than theirs, and you might even give false accusations that aren’t even true at all. Or, for another example there might not be any competition at all. Take for instance a food place. To better themselves they might start using cheap ingredients so it will be cheaper for them to make it, but then they might turn around and sell it for an expensive price. And on the other side good business does come from ethical behavior. I believe that lowering your prices to get more customers is completely ethical. You are not hurting anyone, you’re just simply lowering your rates to beat out your opponent, and I believe that is completely fair.

In regards to Edison his practices were completely unethical. He killed innocent dogs and tortured them to try and beat out his opponent. But sadly his tactics are used in modern business practices today as I mentioned an example above, but that does not make them justified. I believe that unethical behavior can never be justified no matter what the circumstances are. Don’t get me wrong though, just because I say that it is never justified doesn’t mean that I’m saying that I will always be ethical because in all reality there is no way in telling what I will do or what anyone else will do in the future. It really all depends on your morals, and beliefs for each circumstance you come across

Lineman Death~ Desire’ B

To the Editor of the North American Review:

Yes the lineman’s death was tragic but there have been more deaths involving streetcar accidents, omnibuses or wagons than by an electric current. To rid the world of alternating current would mean to end the supply of electricity to thousands of homes that had to go without it because of the defects of direct current. Edison’s own employees realize how much better AC is than DC because one of his companies, the Detroit Edison Station uses it! Also the company isn’t forcing anyone to purchase our apparatus for electric lighting; many people have preferred to use the alternating system.

Sincerely,

George Westinghouse

Sources:

Reply to Mr. Edison in the North American Review: pages 657-658 when westinghouse comes back and puts his own opinions about the 4 classifications of electric currents. Also, when Westinghouse tells how Edison’s experiments were not correct.

also from the letter I will use when Westinghouse points out that no one knows which current it was the electrocuted Feeks.

I will be using jonnes and using chapters 6-8. These chapters go over when Edison first attacks AC, the execution, and when the lineman is electrocuted.

16 B Edison Capital Punishment ~ Desire’ Bounds

I believe that Edison is indeed an expert in electricity in the time period, but I believe it was misrepresented in this case. I think Edison gave a phony testimony to prove his point that AC was much too deadly for people to use. In his case he claimed that AC would kill you instantly. He tried to scare the people away from AC with his testimony. I believe this was very unethical of Edison. He used his influence in the wrong way. He knew that people would believe his every word so he gave a biased testimony and people would believe him. When kemmler was sentenced to death, they strapped him to the electric chair and turned on the AC current. They shut it off only to find that he wasn’t dead and that he was still alive, and they had to turn it on again. This caused some kemmler some serious suffering. If Edison hadn’t given such a fake testimony just to discredit AC, this man would never have had to suffer in this way. I believe that this was very wrong of Edison to use his influence in this way.

Brown~Desire’

Harold Brown came to to the stage after his article about the dangers of alternating current. He began “collecting dogs” and other animals such as a calf and a horse and started running electrical experiments on them to see which current was deadlier. They then showed these experiments to the general public. Even when many people started to leave and cry out Brown still raised the voltage higher and higher until the dog collapsed dead on the floor. Because people were too apalled at what they saw, Brown didn’t even get his point across that AC was deadlier than AC. Another thing that Edison and Harold brought up while at war with Westinghouse was electrocution by the electticity.

Personally, I have lost all respect for Edison. Their public demonstrations were completely unethical. Torturing animals for your own personal game is disgusting. they could have least chosen animals that were going to die anyway, and even then it still wouldn’t have been right becuse they would have been tortured with the pains of direct current before finally being put out of their misery with alternating current. I really lost most of my respect when I read in Jonnes and found that Edison was the man who started the process of electrocuting criminals. This was a bad idea on Edison’s part, especially since he suffered so much before he actually died.

I understand that edison wanted to keep his business alive but he could have kept it alive if he had turned toward AC. Edison and Westinghouse could have then showed the public how to be safe around AC. They could have educated the people so so many wouldn’t have been electrocuted.

AC motor~Desire’

                 Tesla’s alternating current induction motor was unlike any other at this time. His motor did not need the commutator brushes to transform alternating current into direct current. His motor used two alternating currents instead of one. Think of when you walk and your legs move back and forth opposite of each other. That’s how this works. A magnetic field is created from the current by that, which then pushes the rotating shaft of the motor around. Because he used more than one current there was always a strong current that the motor could use. When one of the currents would lose power the other one would continue to move the motor around because it was going the other way. This is the importance of the polyphase alternating current. It allows Tesla to have those two currents out of step with one another so when one dies the other one can continue on.

                Westinghouse was at first going to buy the patents to Ferraris alternating current motor to use as leverage. He thought Ferraris patent would overrule Tesla’s because his were still being processed by the US patent office. Westinghouse started thinking about the problem and knew Tesla had very many patents being processed at the patent office that would be able to cover the motors that his other engineers were experimenting with and Ferraris (so buying the patent from Ferraris would not be a smart option). He figured Tesla’s patents would be broad enough to cover everything AC. So he knew that it would be a much better investment to just take Peck and Browns offer on the Tesla patents.

                Tesla was used to working by himself and not with a lot of people. The reasons why Westinghouse engineers didn’t like Tesla was for one; Tesla told them all that all their AC stations would have to be redone, because the way they did them wasn’t right. They resented Tesla because he came in and basically said that everything they knew about producing electricity and running motors was irrelevant. Another reason for the dislike was because Tesla came from nowhere. He had suddenly arisen to fame and was now giving out orders. The difficulties that Tesla had with commercializing his motors were because the frequency was 60 cycles. Westinghouse engineers had designed all their AC stations to operate at more than twice that frequency.

Memory~ Desire’ Bounds

            Dynamic ram is the template for all modern memory types. It fulfills the need for a fast, short-term memory solution.  This memory needs to be constantly refreshed with an electric charge to keep its information stored. When the computer is turn off all data is lost.

DRAM is used for lots of things as I learned at micron, IPODS, CD players, automotives, cameras etc.  DRAM is probably used for all modern day memory types. It has a memory space that gives your processor very fast access so it can be written down without slowing down the system. The memory is stored in different places so the data will not be lost. 

From Wikipedia, it says that this memory is refreshable. And it’s also a serial access memory which takes things in a sequential order. Another thing that is different from them is their size. One is bigger than the other. We saw how much bigger the other one was on the tour.

What we say at Micron was the little robots or whatever running overhead picking up wafers and taking them to testing stations.

Micron~Desire’ B

                Truth be told I was bored on the micron tour. They took us into a room and gave us a presentation about the company. It was just so boring to me. When were walking down the hallway and looking through the windows we got to see how some things worked, which was a little more interesting to me than sitting in a room just listening to someone talk. I understand why we couldn’t go into the section where they were doing all the testing, but it would have been more amazing if we could have.

                I’m not entirely sure, but I think he did say that Micron did offer co-ops jobs and internships during the summer. I don’t think I would go there for the summer, just because I have some interests that I think would be more exciting than working at Micron. But if I was interested in going there, I would only go if they would teach me as I went along. To prepare myself for this intern/co-op I would really need to take more classes and make sure that the classes I have already been through I know the material really well.

                The majors that are represented at Micron are heavily based on electrical and computer engineering.

How Transformers Work~Desire’ B

Basically transformers just turn down the voltage of electricity running through the wires. It starts out at a really high voltage to get it to travel farther distances, then when it reaches homes, factories, and businesses it turns down the voltage to make it safer for people to use.

It could only work with AC because the AC electrons created a chaning magnetic field around them as they coursed along that which was the key to the transformers induction.

Tesla Master of Lightening~Desire’ B

                This movie was alright, I’m just not a big fan of documentaries at all. This movie showed Tesla in a new light for me, both good and bad. I thought it was really dumb how he thought he could transport from one place to the other. And that lightening beam was way out in left field for me. I guess back in those days since electricity and energy and light was all new, that they assumed anything was possible. Towards the end of Tesla’s life I thought it was sad. How people just regarded him as a crazy old man even though he was the one that came up with polyphase AC and made the Niagara project a reality.

                Tesla and Edison had some very similar characteristics in their personalities. Both of them barely ever slept. They worked non-stop on their inventions and just didn’t need sleep. Another thing that these two shared in common that wasn’t mentioned directly in the movie, but Tesla nor Edison had much of a family life. Edison might have had a wife and kids but he it was as if he didn’t have won. His inventions were his life, just like Tesla. Many women threw themselves at Tesla, but he never showed any interests in anything other than his inventions. This was an advantage for him because it caused him to focus solely on his inventions to get them complete.

                The differences between these two inventors were that Edison didn’t foresee his inventions like Tesla. Tesla would have visions of his inventions, and they would just come to him. From memory he was able to produce amazing things such as the alternating current generator and finished the Niagara project. Edison, had more of a try and see if it works, and Edison drew pictures of his ideas, Tesla did not. I would think that this would be a disadvantage for Tesla because he would never have a hard copy of his ideas and his inventions. I figured that would cripple him, like if he was in the middle of building his motor he suddenly can’t recall it in his vision, he would just be out of luck. I guess these visions played to his advantage, because he became a very successful inventor until he got into his old age.

Electric Nation~Desire’ B

The movie was alright, it wasn’t all that great to me, probably because it was just another documentary, and not an actual fictional movie. But I did learn some things from it nevertheless. I learned that Insull was the one that actually tried to make the dream of middle class people being able to afford electricity a reality. He built a bigger dynamo and then massed produced it across America. He believed so much into this dream that he put all of his time and money into it. He gave middle class people shares in the stock. This started out a good thing but then as, everyone else has already said the Great Depression hit and their stocks were worthless. They accused him of being a crook I guess. I still haven’t understood why they accused him of anything, he was only trying to help out the non wealthy people, and that was how they repaid him. So he left and went from place to place. Then he came back went on trial, and was found not guilty. Then later President Roosevelt wanted to give the government ownership of electricity and Wilki was strongly against Roosevelt and the TVA’s idea. I think the movie brought up the question as to who really should have ownership over electricity and who should not.