Volts Wagon

The hip kids today use the expression IYKYK, which I, being no kid and no hipster, thought was a laughing noise like nyuk-nyuk.

But a young person was kind enough to put me wise. It stands for If You Know, You Know.

Well, if you know me at all, you know I am a big fan of AC/DC, the legendary band. Leader and guitarist Angus Young plugs his amplifiers into electrical outlets and very  loud and wonderful things result.  Angus and his brother Malcolm got the name for the band from seeing "AC/DC" on their sister Margaret's sewing machine...the same Singer that made Angus's stage outfits of schoolboy pants, hat, and tie.

 

And you might have heard me say that my late father, who loved all things electrical so much that he worked for the Baltimore Gas & Electric, was a huge fan of Nikola Tesla, the Serbian inventor who numbered among his developments and discoveries the rotating magnetic field, the basis of most alternating-current - AC - electricity. The idea for three-phase electric power transmission was his too.

He came here to America with four cents in his pocket and soon found work with Thomas Edison, but Edison had one of those lightbulb moments of his and came up with a plan to use DC - direct current - to distribute electricity to every home and office and school and church and store in America.

Tesla (who also invented the Tesla Coil, tiny versions of which are seen across America every spring at Science Fair time) and Edison fought like demons over whose system was right, and probably because he realized that with DC, there would need to be a power transmission station around every corner of the country, Edison fired Tesla, who wound up digging ditches for a while before finding financial backing from George Westinghouse, whose company made the washer-dryer that keeps your pants so clean and the refrigerator that makes your cold cuts so cold. 

In the end, Tesla was right, and Alternating Current became the standard in America.  And he, like Angus Young who proudly wears the T-shirt above, was quite the showman. 

In order to allay fears that AC power was dangerous, Tesla put on shows, allowing  allowing electricity to flow through his body and light up lamps. 

 Now THAT sounds like a Science Fair project to me!