Why did Thomas Edison electrocute an elephant?
science.howstuffworks.com
You may have heard of Topsy the elephant and her sad demise at the hands of Thomas Edison. But what's the real story?
  • bbuez@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    11 months ago

    Turning the Ionosphere and Mantel in to halves of a capacitor would both take more energy than humans have ever generated and be really really really bad for anything tall and conductive

    This is the first time I’ve heard of this hypothesis, as I’ve just generally avoided media talking about the secrets of Tesla’s free energy or whatever, but I am very curious how this would work and what such tripple really bad would happen, sounds like a sweet soft sci fi setting.

    • turmacar@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      11 months ago

      Tesla’s design [for Wardenclyffe] used a concept of a charged conductive upper layer in the atmosphere, a theory dating back to an 1872 idea for a proposed wireless power system by Mahlon Loomis. Tesla not only believed that he could use this layer as his return path in his electrical conduction system, but that the power flowing through it would make it glow, providing night time lighting for cities and shipping lanes.

      It’s a very Victorian / Steampunk idea that is also kind of horrifying. It’s working off theories of what electricity “is” that we now know aren’t accurate, but if you try to scale them to actually working every building and tree and person is now a lightning rod.