NP: Tesla

[kelber at mindspring.com]

I worked as a union electrician for 18 years in the NYC construction industry.  I was the 10th woman to become a journeywoman in my local (Local 3, IBEW).  As part of the apprenticeship requirement, I also earned an AAS degree in electrical technology -- mostly electronics.  We occasionally had to plug a value for magnetic flux (measured in Teslas) into an equation, though we dealt more with farads (capacitance) and henrys (inductance).  There were also equations that involved use of a j-term, the unit vector -- presumably one of the applications for quaternions.  I'll have to dig out my old texts to see how exactly we used the j-term.  Think it had something to do with calculations for resonant AC circuits.

Being an electrician, I learned how to avoid getting shocked (the laborers and carpenters were always getting zapped).  Had a couple of accidents, though.  It's incredibly painful, and the numbness lasts for about 20 minutes.  Occasionaly, we'd use our thumb and forefinger to test whether a wire was live -- a short, relatively painless path for the electricity to flow through.

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: Henry Musikar <hmusikar at speakeasy.net>
>Sent: Dec 28, 2006 11:45 AM
>To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: NP: Tesla
>
>"Tesla" Electric Car:
>http://preview.tinyurl.com/y7uwl9 
>
>Am I the only one here who called the coils "Telsa" when young and awestruck by electrical matters?
>
>HM
>
>