Western Union Lineman – Stephen Iero

Dear Editor of New York paper,

The burning of a lineman was a travesty but was only one death.  The death of John Feeks will make changes to the AC system.  The AC system uses very high voltages and this intense voltage has to be dealt with very carefully.  We will try to change the system so this will never happen again.  In every modern technology there will be deaths, but the deaths from AC power don’t match the number of deaths from use of cars.  If any power system should be shut down it should be DC because there were more accidents in Edison’s power plants than mine.

I morn with his family but i don’t think AC power should be shut down or limited to 300 volts.  We are just reaching the pinnacle of a modern system.  If AC is done away with than the world will drastically change.  Every AC system currently in use will have the change to the weaker DC system.  The use of DC system is not practical for everyone considering the limited area the power can be distributed.

From,

George Washinghouse

Edison and Electrocution – Stephen I

Edison’s opinion on electrocution was unethical because he was only out to save his DC system.  There was no stopping Edison on his path to save his company because now even human lives don’t mean anything to him.  First it was animal testing and then he moved on to humans.  Edison would have thought differently if he personally knew the subject but Kemmler was an axe murder and disliked by many.  Edison did not know for sure that the AC current would be enough to kill a person.  In the trial he use his reputation and people believed him.  Edison was only out to discredit Westinghouses’ Company.  The defense had proof that high voltages did not always kill people because he had  survivors from lighting strikes.

Edison, Brown, and Electrocution – Stephen I

This campaign that Edison and Brown entered was extremely  unethical.  The way they went about the experiment was wrong from the start.  The experimental procedure was not followed because they would test a dog with DC current and then AC current.  Edison had no of telling if the AC current was just a finishing blow on the dog from the 1000 volt of DC power.  If he wanted to test on animals then he should have had an animal for each current.  He can not have one test subject because that will throw off the results.  I am not against the animal testing but I am againt the way Edison and Brown went about it.

Although from the business side of this argument this testing procedure was very important because the companies should know what their electricity was capable of doing.  Edison was just looking out for his own business but he didn’t have to go about it in this way.

Tesla and the AC motor – Stephen I

Tesla’s first lecture for his AC motor was done at the American Institute of Electrical Engineers.  This was where he spoke about his improvements to the motor and how it worked.  He also demonstrated the motor and explained how it was better than the DC motor.

Tesla’s AC induction motor was different from motors around at that time.  Tesla’s Ac motor did not have a use for the commutator brushes.  A commutator is an electrical device that reverses the direction of the flowing current.  Since his motor did not need the commutator this means that the motor is more reliable because it has less parts.  Tesla uses two AC currents because there is always a force turning the motor.  As one power dies the other one comes on and keeps the revolutions going.  This process keeps going on in order to make an electrical current.  This was what made Tesla’s AC motor so important to the electrical industry.

Westinghouse bought the patents from Tesla because they were working on the same idea.  If Westinghouse did purchase them then he would have had to stop working on his ideas because they were protected by patents.  Tesla had a hard time working with Westinghouse because Tesla liked to work by himself.  Westinghouse’s engineers did not like Tesla because he told them that their knowledge on the electricity was useless.

Memory – Stephen I

Dynamic random access memory is a type of memory that stores a bit of the given data in different capacitors.  The capacitors would be given an electrical charge in order for the data to not be lost due to leaking in the capacitors.  Delay line memory is a type of memory that uses the vacuum tubes to slow down the data while it is being transfered and copied to another place for use in the future.

Today RAM is used in mostly every product that we use today.  We learned at the Micron tour what their memory chips are used in and I was surprised to learn how we daily use them.

Micron – Stephen I

The trip to Micron was a very educational trip for me.  I was very interested even from the time we pulled up on the bus because I saw how the building and all of its marvels.  Micron is a very official Corporation because they have trade secrets that they do not want their competitors getting a hold of them.  Having the smallest edge on your competitors is essential to compete in the capitalistic market.  They limited everyone that was on the tour to what they could bring to insure this secrecy.

Going into Micron I did not know much about DRAM, Flash based memory, and imaging sensors.  We saw all of these fabricated on site except for the imaging sensors because the environment has to be very clean in which they are created.  The DRAM and Flash memory has to also be clean but not to the standards of the image sensoring.  The room that the memory is fabricated in is yellow in order to not damage the wafers.  The wafers are also in a box called a FOUP and this was another precaution that is taken to insure that the wafer does not get contaminated with any particles floating in the air.  The memory that is fabricated on site is used in most of the products that we use in a daily basis.

The different jobs there include accounting, marketing, systems engineering, mechanical engineering, and many other jobs in the engineering field.  There are also jobs to keep the machines working to full production.  Working at Micron would be an excitement everyday but I would need further schooling to do the work needed.

How Transformers Work – Stephen Iero

A transformer is a device that takes electricity of one voltage and converts it into a different voltage.  A transformer changes voltage from low to high or high to low, this procedure is referred to as Stepping.  AC (alternating current) is the only type of current that can use the transformer because back then there was no simple way of accomplishing this task.  Since the power is at such high voltage then it can be easily transported over long distances with little voltage drop along the way.  Before the electricity would be able to be used the voltage would have to be dropped for commercial and household use.

The first transformer was created by Faraday and his had two wires wrapped around an iron bar.  One of the wires was an input and the other was an output, each of these wires completed a circuit back to the iron bar.  The AC current was switched to go back and forth in order to create a magnetic field.  This created magnetic field steps up or down the voltage in the wrapped wires.

Tesla Master of Lightening – Stephen I

The movie Tesla Master of Lighting was about Nikola Tesla’s life.  The movie talks about how Tesla got to the top of the inventors and also about his gradual decent into poverty.  Tesla started overseas in Serbia and his vision of the AC motor is what driven him to come to America and live the American Dream.  The way Tesla worked was not normal to the standards of that time because he had visions of his inventions.  These visions came to him in dreams and they were the AC motor, wireless communication, and wireless power supply.  When he came over to America he worked for Edison until he realized that Edison was a crook because he did not pay him $50,000 as promised for improving the generators.  After this Tesla started his own company with Westinghouse only a few buildings down from Edison’s company, this is where the AC current was explored and rapidly expanded.  Tesla had the same major flaw as Edison which was stubbornness.  Tesla did not give up on the idea of wireless power supply which was time he could have been working in other important inventions.  Tesla was determined on creating inventions that would serve a purpose in war but they were rarely picked up on the battle fields.

Electric Nation – Stephen I.

The film “Electric Nation” taught me about the development of the lighting systems down in the Tennessee valley.  The companies involved were the government funded TVA and the private electric companies.  I learned about the battle over who would provide the farmers with their electricity, it was either the public or private sector.   Electricity was little known by the farmers in this time because they called it “juice”.  The movie showed the way Edison had to convince the officials in New York to approve the electrical system and that was achieved by taking them to Menlo Park which was wired for lights.  This film told the true story about how Edison worked through his problems unlike the other Edison movie because it was not made for Hollywood.  The larger question that was answered is that electricity should be provided to everyone and it should also be affordable.  The electric system was so important in New York City because if there was not a system put in by Edison then it would have been years for any system to first show up.  Insull’s vision was to make electricity provided to all social classes located in Chicago and the surrounding areas.  His plan went wrong because the Great Depression made all stocks worthless.  Insull sold stocks to most of his customers and they could not originally afford them in the first place.  When the market crashed then the they could not not pay their shareholders back.  Insull was put in trial under Roosevelt’s presidency and Insull was found not guilty.   Wilkie was the one that was against the Roosevelt plan and the TVA because he was in favor of the private electrical systems.

Edison The Man – Stephen Iero

Edison was a man that never let a man down.  He always tried to help whenever he was able too.  I think Edison saw a bit of himself when Jimmy came to Menlo Park because Edison was in the same position as Jimmy when he was young.  He also wanted the very best for his workers at the park, he made sure that they had a full pay out before he let them go.  The only people that were left out was his family because he was completely dedicated to the invention of the light bulb.  Once Edison had an idea he followed through with that idea to its full extent and that was a success for most of the time.  I never knew that Edison was such people person with the media and his colleagues.    There are a few differences from the book to the movie but they are not huge.  Edison did discover most of his invention by accident but then he used science and the scientific process to perfect his invention.  The movie told the story of how he had to make inventions to stall and save time.