But once they were set up, who cared what style plug their customers used? What were you gonna do, lug your new vacuum cleaner across the ocean on a boat? Early efforts to standardize the plug by organizations like the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) had trouble taking hold—who were they to tell a country which plug to adopt?

For example, Britain incorporated fuses in the appliance plug instead of the wiring system because of a shortage of copper at the time.

You know how the British had control over India for, like, ninety years? Well, along with exporting cricket and inflicting unquantifiable cultural damage, they showed the subcontinent how to plug stuff in, the British way! Problem is, they left in 1947. The BS 1363 plug—the new one—wasn’t introduced until 1946, and didn’t see widespread adoption until a few years later. So India still uses the old British plug, as does Sri Lanka, Nepal and Namibia. Basically, the best way to guess who’s got which socket is to brush up on your WW1/WW2 history, and to have a deep passion for postcolonial literature. No, really.

Despite widespread global travel, the expense of rewiring electrical grids all over the world means there won’t be any standardization of plugs anytime soon. Read the whole story at Gizmodo. Link -via Geeks Are Sexy

Image: Lightning Packs

Lightning Packs is a company that is developing backpacks that generate electricity with the motion of their users. As the user walks, the spring-mounted backback bounces slightly, turning a gear on a generator. It is the brainchild of Lawrence C. Rome of the University of Pennsylvania, who hopes to market his idea to the U.S. military:

“Soldiers now carry GPS receivers, night vision goggles, headlamps, communication devices, and more. And with this technology, means of powering them becomes critical. Soldiers carry eighty pound backpacks, up to twenty pounds of which are spare batteries. Now, with the Suspended Load Backpack, electricity can be generated to power the equipment directly or to charge a lightweight rechargeable battery,” Dr. Rome said.

When walking, the Suspended Load Backpack can generate up to 7.4 watts, more than enough power to simultaneously power an MP3 player, night vision goggles (or 3 LED headlamp), a PDA, a CMOS image decoder, a handheld GPS, Bluetooth, and a GSM terminal in talk mode.

Link via Gizmodo (where there’s a video)

Photo: Hiroshi Sugimoto

Hiroshi Sugimoto is a Japanese photograher who takes pictures of electrical charges. His exhibit “Lightning Fields” is currently on display at the Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco. Sugimoto uses a 400,000-volt Van De Graaff generator to directly apply electricity to film. The above image is entitled “Lightning Fields 128, 2008.”

Artist’s Website

Link via Gizmodo

Previously on Neatorama: Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Henry VIII Photos

This picture of birds on wires by photographer Paulo Pinto looks like music notation. So Jarbas Agnelli naturally wanted to find out what that music sounded like.

Reading a newspaper, I saw a picture of birds on the electric wires. I cut out the photo and decided to make a song, using the exact location of the birds as notes (no Photoshop edit). I knew it wasn’t the most original idea in the universe. I was just curious to hear what melody the birds were creating.

-via Bits and Pieces

(Links open in a new browser window/tab)

	Juggling with Bowling Ball Remember the Chinlone video we posted on Neatorama a while ago? Well, that ain' nothing compared to this rhythmic gymnast juggling with a bowling ball! I kid: that's not a bowling ball, but it sure does look like one! Link
	Dog Hates the Happy Birthday Song! Dave the Wonder Dog is a half black lab, half border colli and all crazy. It has a strange musical trigger: if you sing the Happy Birthday Song, be prepared to deal with a dog gone berserk ... Link
	Physics Fun: Jell-O + Electricity = FIRE! Can you make Jell-O electrically conductive? Sure you can, if you make it out of alcohol. Here's what you get when you tase a Jell-O: Link (Includes the phrase "electrically active Jell-O mound" that is PURE WIN)
	Cell Phone Reunion When Bluetooth, cell phones, car phone and the Blackberry teams up, the iPhone gets what he deserves ... From the geniuses over at CollegeHumor: Link (NSFW language - the ending makes it all worth the wait)
	The Crazy PS3 Kid Banned From Playing PS3 That PS3 is like crack for little kids - here's a Norwegian kid giving an Oscar-worthy performance when he got banned from playing his Playstation. His range of emotion is amazing! Christian Bale, watch out! Link

For more the web's most interesting videos, check out: VideoSift.

Inspired by the legendary "A Day at the Science Fair" (not a polite link, but very funny) thread at SomethingAweful, Travis Pitts of Zom-Bot made this quick and dirty (and very funny) image: Link – via The Zeray Gazette

And yes, I think that’s probably Disaster Girl or her twin sister.

Everyone talks about alternative energy these days but mostly in terms of water, wind and solar. What about cars, cows and tornados?

To meet our future energy requirements, we need to rely on a huge range of alternative sources. Let’s not forget the whimsical beginnings of our efforts to harness electricity (I’m referring to the kite of Benjamin Franklin). It’s only fitting that electricity generation technologies come from left field.

Link

Update 1/15/09 by Alex: Let’s do this instead – a thumbnail with a link to the video clip. It’s a fascinating excerpt from the IMAX movie Straight Up: Helicopters in Action

The supercharged surface is embedded with piezoelectric crystals, which transform kinetic energy from passing vehicles into an electrical current. With widespread adoption, the technology could feed energy back into the nation’s burgeoning electric vehicle grid, transforming congested roadways into a clean green source of energy.

The amount of electricity produced isn’t that much (400 kilowatts per kilometer or 645/mi), and there’s no mention on how cost effective it would be. But given the sheer amount of roadways we have (the US has over 4 million miles of roads and streets in its highway system alone), it’s an interesting albeit niche approach to generate electricity.

Link

Crush a can: $1 million.

Newfound ability of geeky scientists to crush aluminum cans: Priceless. Link ]]> http://www.neatorama.com/2005/08/09/aluminum-can-no-match-for-all-the-worlds-electricity/feed/ 0