power implies violence...

[Seb Thirlway]

Disturbing casualties of the War of the Currents, between Edison's vested-interest in DC
transmission and Tesla's AC:

"Edison went on to carry out a campaign to discourage the use of alternating current. Edison
personally presided over several executions of animals, primarily stray cats and dogs, to
demonstrate to the press that his system of direct current was safer than that of alternating
current.[citation needed] Edison's series of animal executions peaked with the electrocution of
Topsy the Elephant. He also tried to popularize the term for being electrocuted as being
"Westinghoused".
Edison opposed capital punishment, but his desire to disparage the system of alternating current
led to the invention of the electric chair."

Power corrupts, DC power corrupts absolutely...

"Harold P. Brown, who was being secretly paid by Edison, constructed the first electric chair for
the state of New York in order to promote the idea that alternating current was deadlier than DC.
[1]  When the chair was first used, on August 6, 1890, the technicians on hand misjudged the
voltage needed to kill the condemned prisoner, William Kemmler. The first jolt of electricity was
not enough to kill Kemmler, and left him only badly injured. The procedure had to be repeated and
a reporter on hand described it as "an awful spectacle, far worse than hanging". George
Westinghouse commented: "They would have done better using an axe.""

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Currents

This reads like one of Scarsdale Vibe's doings!  I'm surprised there's no mention of it in AtD,
it's such good material.  (now I'm expecting TRP to mention EVERYTHING, of course...)

Ironically given Tesla's "free power" idea (which I'm looking into, any clued-up
electrical-engineer-types here to give a critique of the many conspiracy-theories about this?),
the adoption of Tesla's AC transmission model (which he'd sold to Westinghouse) made _centralised_
large-scale power-generation and distribution possible: the whole infrastructure Pynchon
fantasises on in the Byron the Bulb episode.  Imagine that Tesla had never discovered the
advantages of AC - is there a counterfactual scenario possible here, with centralised power
remaining impractical due to the distance-related voltage-losses inevitable with DC?  Resulting,
in my counterfactual fantasy at least, in local self-organised power generation and usage, as in
Alasdair Gray's "The History Maker".

Of course centralised power-generation and delivery is more efficient; an argument that persists
today against small-scale local wind/sun generation.  But I wonder whether anyone at the time of
AtD made these connections (if you'll excuse the term)?  Nowadays the idea of combining the
benefits of hi-tech with self-sufficiency is a familiar one, but I wonder whether anyone at the
time of AtD imagined combining Walden with technology?  Or was the anti-industrialising tendency
absolutist about rejecting industrialisation and all its works and empty promises?

In the Pynchon world this question is supposed to be irrelevant, since technological advances are
immediately snapped up by entrenched power, and their promise stifled.  But it's still a good question.


		
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