Manufacturing facilities and workshops used to distribute water or steam
power from a limited number of sources (sometimes just one) via shafts,
pulleys, belts, etc. to machine tools of various types. "Elements of
Mechanics and Machine Design," authored by Erik Oberg and published by
The Industrial Press in 1923 provides design information for such
shafting even through electric motors had been available for quite a few
years. The motors must have still been expensive enough during the
1920s to justify all that shafting and associated components so that
only a limited number of motors (maybe only one) would be required.
Maybe transformers were also very expensive early on and remained that
way for awhile.
73,
Maynard
W6PAP
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On 8/1/24 00:38, Richard Knoppow wrote:
I don't know. The articles I found don't make it clear. I can't even
find a list of cities that had DC power. Evidently New York, or at least
Manhattan did and parts of Boston. Power was distributed to buildings
and factories but I can't find specific references to homes.
There is a pretty extensive article on the "war of the currents" at
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Which has some information on early power distribution, but you link
this so have already read it.
Now, comes the question of why Hallicrafters and virtually all other
radio manufacturers made AC/DC radios and phonographs. Was there a big
market or was it due to the economy of not having to use transformers?
Since transformerless sets could operate inherently on both AC and DC
the DC might just have come with the territory. DC was also used on many
ships and boats so radios made to work on them would have to run on DC.
But, Hallicrafters made an AC/DC version of the S-40 receiver as the
S-52 and later the S-77. These were advertised as marine receives but
don't have the MF marine band, they are essentially the same as the S-40
series with some changes in tubes to allow series heaters. So, perhaps
the marine market was large enough to justify manufacturing them.
You have piqued my curiosity so I will do some more searching.
On 7/31/2024 4:40 PM, don Root wrote:
Richard, just for the record, did they distribute DC to homes?
Exactly where
<>
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<> ??talks about it,
and just says ¡°customers¡±, with no mention about houses or special
businesses.
--
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles
WB6KBL
SKCC 19998
