It might suprise you to know but Thomas Edison attempted to show that AC electricity was more dangous than DC (which is electric company supplied). So he invented the electric chair (AC), also he electicuted a poor Elephant, there is film of it out there.

Edison your a bastard.

they should just leave kebabs near the vats whilst they're brewing the hooch, then they won't go rampaging looking for the nearest lump of mystery meat, pitta and chilli sauce

Sorry - Couldnt resist haha

To be fair to Edison, the elephant he electrocuted was done as a form of safety demonstration, and she had killed 3 keepers so far...

Sounds like Exeter city centre on a Saturday night.. fortunately God in all his wisdom didn't make men big enough to knock over electricity poles.

Lucky for the villagers they didnt find a car with the keys left in?

I'm assuming you saw the recent QI (repeat?) about Edison electrocuting the homicidal pachyderm... I noticed he (Edison, not Fry) also fed the rampaging behemoth a large quantity of a cyanide compound, and that the reports were of a peaceful death. I wonder how much her passing away was due to electrocution and how much to poisioning...

And the poor bugger was stuffed with cyanide beforehand, apparantly (I saw it on QI, IIRC)

How do you get 4 elephants in a Mini?

Two in the front, two in the back.

How do you get two whales in a Mini?

Down the M4.

Ahem. Coat, taxi.

...Note to self: Never go drinking with a Republican.

I assume fried elephant tastes like chicken?

I think we need a new noun to describe people who like to try and appear tremendously well-informed by regurgitating stuff they heard on QI. Suggestions?

nor a democrat that's drunk off their a...

coat... right.

Edison's idea of invention was 1000 monkeys. He didn't think about what he did, he just tried anything and everything. When that didn't get results, he stole the ideas of his employees and the competition.

What Edison was halfway good at was public relations. He paid a couple dollars for each dog the local kids could bring him and fried them using AC. Not that that proves that DC is safe...

The greenie moonbats should be glad he lost the power wars, or there would be a coal-fired DC generation plant on every other street corner. DC power doesn't go long distances.

"To be fair to Edison, the elephant he electrocuted was done as a form of safety demonstration, and she had killed 3 keepers so far..."

i expect you probably wouldn't much like being caged, either...

@ron beck

you might want to read up on one Nikola Tesla, who was the primary advocate of DC power, and who demonstrated some intriguing solutions to the distance-transmission problems. unfortunately, due to a number of factors (including Edison's ruthless and deceptive smear campaign involving the aforementioned elephant "electrocution", as well as Tesla's strong bent towards invention and not entrepreneurship), he was never able to capitalize on or patent those particular inventions and they appear to be lost to history...

with thosh poor elephuntz I too am big and when I am drunk I tend to knock shit oversh. So far I haven't electrocuted myself or been run out of town but it's only a matter of time and calories. Wheres the alchohol icon dammit.

Actually many very long lines and ties between grids are done with DC. DC can go further than AC because you don't have to worry about inductance etc.. Using DC also means you don't have to bother with synchronisation.

AC, however, is far more useful for reticulation mainly because this can work with transformers which provide a very efficient, compact and cheap way to step down voltage. With DC you'd either need local generators or some far less efficient conversion strategy.

But still, Edison was the Bill Gates of his day. Liar, cheat etc.

It's clear that these are reincarnated football thugs. Or perhaps they'll

*be* reincarnated as football thugs.

He aint heavy ... he's my IT Elephants that needed the hooch to give 'em the courage to tangle with power lines in order to penitrate REGISTER and get in the News. I guess they could have packed their trunks with batteries and "torched" a few of the darker villiages! I need a sandwich !

...for being Trunk & Disorderly.

@ "Edison your a bastard."

Thats a bit rich coming from Joe Stalin.

Drunken rampage blackens 30,000 homes and 6 elephants

Actually Tesla was the primary advocate of AC power. He was partnered with Westinghouse who was the one Edison was competing with.

The inventions that were "lost" include fluorescent lighting and microwaves.

Actually, RK, while Tesla did do work on DC while he was employed by Thomas Edison, it was actually his work on AC that he felt was his important contribution at the time. Edison was having none of that, however, and Tesla went to work for George Westinghouse, where he pretty much perfected the basics of polyphase AC generatoprs and motors, fluorescent lighting, and much more.

Edison, in fact, was DC's primary promoter, vs. Tesla's and Westinghouse's AC system. Tesla was generally pretty much dismissive of DC.

The whole elephant thing was Edison trying to prove how dangerous AC was, since AC's economic advantages (longer transmission distance and thinner wires needed to carry equivalent loads) threatened his business. He certainly advertsed the "advantages" of electrocution as a means of execution but probably went a bit too far when he suggested that the procedure should be called "Westinghousing".

The first electric chair was officially (and probably actually) designed and built by the electrician at Auburn Prison in New York although Edison MIGHT have had a hand in it, since he was involved in the subterfuge needed to buy the necessary generators from Westinghouse (who refused to sell them to the prison, for obvious reasons).

Let's get this straight: The Register gets it's Meghalaya news from a West Australian newspaper.

That's reassuring.

I really trust their technical content now.

only 6!!!

But I do hear they put on a pretty decent BBQ ...

I'll Pachy my bags now i think.