Live Wires Research Articles

After the West Was Won: Homesteaders and Town-Builders in Western South Dakota, 1900–1917 by Paula M. Nelson

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 697 knows all too well, is that the treatment necessarily is discursive. What really made Haller and Julia Nutt build the huge and unusual octagon at Longwood? Do we need to know that Haller was a graduate of the University of Kentucky and of the Virginia Medical School or that he was mechanically inclined and experimented with farm machines? Is it important that he read Greek and Latin or that he was physically frail? My answer to these queries is Yes, for the reason that one never knows the decisive elements in the mysterious chemistry between ar­ chitect and client(s). Obviously, both the Nutts and Samuel Sloan, their architect, were interested in the novel ideas of Orson Fowler, and all three were extremely determined personalities. Kennedy rightly calls attention to Nutt’s mad determination to see his building go up during the very months that the country was sinking into Civil War. Was the unusual form of the building a symbol of his adherence to the Unionist cause or (equally possible) a kind of defiance to his neighbors? In this complex set of circumstances anything is possible, and we need to have all the facts available. There are, of course, many problems that I would have liked to see treated in this book. For example, there are the three houses by Charles Bulhnch for Harrison Gray Otis, Jr. Otis made his substantial fortune by speculation in Boston real estate (Beacon Hill), and he does not fit very easily into Kennedy’s theory on the plantation dynamic as the source of American architectural energies. Alexander Hamilton’s New York house by John McComb, Jr., on the other hand, would fit nicely; old photos show that it looked very much like a West Indies plantation headquarters. There is not enough on the patterns of social life in the great houses with which the author is largely concerned. There is not enough about building technology (did they have dumbwaiters for those formal dining rooms?). Notwithstanding these criticisms, this is an important and valuable book. We need more like it. Leonard K. Eaton Dr. Eaton is Emil Lorch Professor of Architecture at the University of Michigan and has published four books on the history of architecture. His 1985 Morgan lecture on the clients of Benjamin Henry Latrobe is being published by the University of Louisville Press, and a volume of collected essays will be published by Iowa State University Press. After the West Was Won: Homesteaders and Town-Builders in Western South Dakota, 1900—1917. By Paula M. Nelson. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1986. Pp. xvi + 220; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $22.50. Even though the Superintendent of the Census announced the official closing of the American frontier in his report for 1890, sizable sections of the country, mostly on the Great Plains, remained virgin 698 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE land for years to come. Part of the farmers’ last frontier included the “West River Country” in South Dakota between the Missouri River and the Black Hills. Not until shortly after the turn of the century did “sodbusters,” including single women, flock to this area, made available in large measure when the federal government opened for­ mer Indian reserves. Then two rival railroads, the Chicago & North Western and the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul (Milwaukee Road), promoted settlement through extensive advertising campaigns and, more important, by extending lines into the region. The West River Country thus gave way to the plow. Wheat, corn, and other held crops sprouted on the rolling, treeless prairies. Towns sprang up, boomed by these same railroad companies and the initial cadre of merchants and other “live wires.” Life for West River Country pioneers was not easy, even though advances in agriculture, transportation, and communication had al­ ready altered considerably the nature of rural and small-town life. But improved technology could not make rain follow the plow. A nasty drought that reached a peak in 1911 shattered the dreams of thousands who had originally been so optimistic, and a shakeout pe­ riod of sorts began. Only when farmers realized that they must adjust to unique environmental conditions did a degree of stability and...

Inspection Technique: Live wires wearing thin

Inspection Technique: Live wires wearing thin

An electrified enclosure of 650 m2 designed for rearing baboons (Papio papio)

AbstractA system for an electrified enclosure designed for baboons is described. Live wires were alternated with grounded wires in order to increase the likelihood of electric shock if an animal tried to escape. A sinusoidal current of 50‐Hz frequency, 650‐V voltage, and 10 mA was used and proved to be quite efficient and not dangerous. In order to make the apparatus more reliable the electric main sources were connected to an automatic control system which monitored irregularities in the supply and switches to an emergency circuit if necessary.

Constants of High Voltage Lines

IN a paper by J. S. Forrest published in the December number of the Journal of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, instructive data are given about the constants' of the high voltage lines used in the national ‘grid” of Great Britain. Twenty years ago, engineers considered merely the coefficients of electromagnetic induction between neighbouring power lines. Experience, however, has proved that the electrostatic coefficients are in many cases much more important. If we have two parallel lines, one maintained at a high voltage and the other insulated, a voltage will be induced in the latter which can be computed when the mutual electrostatic coefficient between the two is known. Many years ago, Kelvin and Maxwell showed how these coefficients could be calculated, and now engineers are beginning to adopt their methods. The experiments described in this paper show that when the pressures on the live wires are 132 kilovolts, the induced pressures on neighbouring ‘dead’ wires may sometimes be thousands of volts. Experiments were made by measuring the resistance of a fisherman's line when wet with river water, to find out whether he ran any risk of getting a serious shock if his line hit a live wire. It was found that the resistance of the line measured half a megohm per centimetre length, and it is inferred that, provided the line beyond his rod be several yards in length, there is little risk. We do not agree with this conclusion. A few years ago an engineer, thinking that a 33,000-volt line was dead and wishing to measure its sag, threw up his measuring tape, which was not of metal, over it, and was instantly electrocuted. We feel certain that a fisherman would run a very serious risk if his line touched a high tension wire at a river crossing.

Death by Electric Currents and by Lightning 1

DEATH BY ELECTRIC CURRENTS. I BELIEVE that no loss of human life from industrial currents of electricity occurred before 1879, though currents strong enough to have caused death were employed in lighting the operatic stage in Paris (at the first performance of Meyerbeer's “Le Prophète”) so long ago as 1849, and in lighthouses on and off the coast of England in 1857. In 1879 a stage carpenter was killed at Lyons by the alternating current of a Siemens dynamo that was giving a voltage of about 250 volts at the time. The man became insensible at once, and died in twenty minutes; artificial respiration was not applied. The first death in this country took place at a theatre in Aston, outside Birmingham, in 1880, where a bandsman short-circuited a powerful electric battery, became insensible, and died in forty minutes. Since that date the annual number of deaths from electric shock has steadily increased, particularly during this century, in which the industrial employment of electricity has extended so widely, an'd is now quite large. In the ten years 1901–10 the Registrar-General's returns show a total of 183 such deaths in England and Wales, the population having risen from 32½ to 36 million during that period. In the three years 1901 to 1903 there were twenty-five deaths; in 1908, twenty-five; in 1909, twenty-nine; in 1910, twenty-six. Only two of these 183 victims were females, because women are so much less exposed to contact with dangerous electric currents than are men. Many deaths by electricity occur annually on the Continent, though I can only bring forward a few scattered figures to prove it. In Germany, thirty-three were killed in 1908; fifty-two in 1909; forty-six in 1911. In Austria eleven were killed by electricity in 1907; ten in 1910; ten in 1911. In Switzerland, twenty-one were killed in 1905; nineteen in 1906. I think it probable that about 200 persons are killed by electricity annually over the whole of Europe. As regards the United States of America, where electricity is so very extensively employed, I have not been able to find any statistical records. So long ago as 1888 Brown estimated that during the past five years some 200 people had been killed by handling live electric wires. One must remember that in America life is held very cheap, and that safeguards and protective legislation tend to be regarded as undue restrictions upon industry and commerce. I imagine that not fewer than 200 persons are accidentally killed by electric currents every year in America. As a rule, onlv a single person is killed by electricity in any single accident; but in an accident occurring in 1909 at Olginate, a village in Lombardy, ten people were killed outright by a three-phase current at 3000 volts, one was saved by artificial respiration, and about a dozen more were severely injured (Hoest).

Electric Light Company. Negligence. Live Wires

Electric Light Company. Negligence. Live Wires