Tuesday, March 16, 2021
Why didn't I finish this connection?
Ack! Why didn't I complete this chain of reasoning before?
From two recent pieces.
Vreeland:
Lately I've been studying and animating some old devices that followed the liquid soft analog path instead of the dry hard digital path. The dry path didn't win a decisive victory until around 1960. Wet electronics came before dry. The first telegraphs used potential difference from wet batteries to form visible streams of electrolysis bubbles, one wire for each letter. Electrolysis is messy, so it receded quickly from everyday use into lab use.Ayrton:
I'd never thought about why it was better to build a voltmeter by placing a known resistance in series with an ammeter. Ayrton shows why. Pure voltameters were clumsy and dangerous. Galvanometers were much easier to handle and less messy. Sidenote: Nature disagrees. As I've often noted, Nature strongly prefers using static fields for both meters and motors. Human technology strongly prefers using magnetic fields for meters and motors.What's the missed connection? Nature is wet and chemical, so Nature prefers electrostatic fields and ionic currents (moving charged molecules around). Human tech moved away from wet stuff, so human tech prefers magnetic fields and electron currents. Wet = static, Dry = magnetic. If we had continued favoring wet tech, we would have been more resonant with Nature, and we wouldn't have LOST some of the understanding and therapy methods that we were developing before 1906. A couple of recent "rediscoveries" are good examples. Electricity could speed wound healing. The electrotherapists in the 1880s knew this and used it. Researchers are looking into the role of ionic currents in consciousness. Ionic currents are wet.
Labels: Asked and finally answered
¶ 2:40 AM
