To defend his point, Edison conducted an experiment to cook an elephant.
Thomas Edison (1847 – 1931) was a great American inventor. He left mankind with thousands of inventions, extremely useful inventions that we still apply today.
One of his most important inventions was the filament light bulb, which led to an even larger invention: the world’s first Direct Current (DC) power distribution plant. world in 1880.
But it was also because of this power plant that 23 years later, he conducted a controversial experiment for the whole world: toasted a 36-year-old elephant with 6600V Alternating Current (AC).
The truth is that Edison’s direct current (DC) power generation system at that time was always maintained in a “unique” state, until Nikola Tesla appeared with the Westinghouse electric company in 1888.
Tesla is a genius inventor, even many people appreciate him more than Edison. He invented the working principle of alternating current (AC) on an electric motor, which was later acquired by Westinghouse. And since then, a war over electricity (The Current War) has broken out between Edison (DC) and Westinghouse (AC).
Electric war between Tesla and Edison.
Essentially, Westinghouse’s alternating current can push the voltage very high and then lower it with a transformer. As a result, the transmission of electricity by alternating current requires conductors with a much smaller cross-section than Edison’s direct current transmission equipment, thereby greatly reducing costs.
By the time Tesla invented the AC motor, Edison and his associates were forced to “attack” the AC side in the field of electrical safety. The Edison faction thinks that AC current is much more dangerous than DC . This is essentially true, because according to later experiments, the damage caused by AC current on living cells is 2-4 times greater than DC at the same voltage.
And to prove this, Edison performed a series of experiments that killed animals with alternating current, like shocking a horse in the picture below.
Experiment to shock a horse to death with alternating current.
However, despite receiving the world’s consensus on how dangerous alternating current is, Edison’s experiments are still very controversial because of the humanity in them. In addition, Edison could not turn the situation when the AC line brought too many advantages.
By 1892, when the largest hydroelectric power plant on the planet at that time at Niagara Falls (USA) decided to use the alternating current system to transmit electricity to a location 32km away, it was considered that Edison had given up. completely.
Edison’s experiment is just one of many proofs of human callousness in the name of “science”.
For example, in 1817, German scientist – Karl August Weinhold tried to create a cat zombie, by killing a cat and then injecting it with a solution of zinc and silver. Or like the famous study in 1990, when scientists cut off almost the entire brain of a cat to find the area responsible for motor ability.
While it is undeniable that we must perform experiments on animals before applying them to humans, many of them are just to prove and defend the opinion of a few individuals. This is exactly what animal rights organizations are trying to condemn today.