[Lowfer] [Other] History AC

[Dale Rice]

Ed,
My Grandparents lived in Wilmar, CA in 1947 and I remember the same
changeover. (I think Wilmar changed to S. San Gabriel didn't it?) Edison was
going out and getting peoples clocks and reworking them and giving them
back. It must have been pretty labor intensive. I wish I knew what became of
Grandmas old Seth-Thomas.
My parents told me how the lights flickered when they lived in the Canal
Zone because it was 25 cycle there.

Dale Rice

>
> There have been a number of frequencies used, including 133 cps and 0
> (DC).  I would assume 60 Hz became more popular when transformer "iron"
> got less lossy and the higher frequency required substantially less
> iron.  When I moved to Southern California in 1947 the Edison company
> was in the process of converting from 50 Hz to 60 Hz, a big project
> since they paid the bill of necessary conversions.  When my brother in
> law got out of college his first job was working for Bechtel and
> engineering conversions for industrial installations.  Changes included
> "re-poling" of big motors and replacing small ones for which that wasn't
> practical.  In addition it was necessary to change gear or pulley ratios
> where speed was critical.
>
> Couple of anecdotes.  I remember going into a drug store in
> Philadelphia (about 1946) and seeing a pinball machine with a DC to AC
> rotary converter sitting under it.  This particular part of Philly was
> still using DC that late.  When I fired up a home made TV set with a
> fancy power transformer I'd gotten bootlegged at NRL it ran for a while,
> smoked, and kept on smoking for hours.  The transformer was designed for
> 60 Hz with a hypersil core with pretty sharp saturation characteristics
> and the 50 Hz had overheated the windings beyond redemption.
>
> The 16-2/3 Hz was (and maybe still is?) used for electric RR
> locomotives which used series connected commutator motors because of
> their speed-torque properties.  This frequency was "almost as good as"
> DC and easier to transmit long distances.
>
> Ed