Posted on 04/19/2006 10:57:35 AM PDT by Neville72
"The real story here is a transformer that takes 5 volts DIRECT CURRENT to thousands of volts. Heretofore transformers have been Alternating Current only devices."
LOL! Good one.
" It is mind boggling that we are still using this 1878 invention, essentially unchanged."
True. The ones I've been thinking about for decades are the CRT and the internal combustion engine. Both incredibly resilient. I studied electronics decades ago and people were talking about and thinking about replacing the CRT with something solid state. I kept waiting for to happen and it kept not happening. True, it is finally happening.
The CRT just seemed so inefficient, such a huge energy burner, so much heat so much voltage. But it's had a good long reign.
And consider the internal combustion engine. It's a series of explosions for crying out loud! How can that be efficient? Yet, it is still king.
Yeah? Ever been shot with one of these?
In five years, it'll be a *century* old. Boy, wouldn't it be embarassing to be caught carrying something like that? *Ancient.* All the gang-bangers with their phasers and spin-stabilised tibanna gas blasters and photon grenades and light sabers and point singularity projectors would laugh at you.
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