In one of the darker turns of science and invention... Thomas Edison (yeah, the guy that 'invented' the lightbulb, I get the 'dark' pun) wanted to demonstrate to the populace how dangerous his rival's delivery of electricity was. Edison was suggesting sending electricity by Direct Current, whereas his rival, Tesla (yeah, they really didn't like each other) was suggesting Alternating Current. He suggested that AC was so dangerous it could kill an elephant.
And then he showed how. He actually had his own movie company film the electrocution of Topsy, an Elephant who had a reputation of being 'bad' as it killed a spectator in 1902. So Edison's film "Electrocuting an Elephant" documented.
This happened on this day in 1903. What a weird time.
In lighter times, a retired wrestler, Jesse "the Body" Ventura, had decided to try out the ring of politics and on this day in 1999 was sworn in as the Governor of Minnesota.
He made the transition from 'the body' to 'the mind'.
In powers of 'the mind' is the ability that when someone loses their eyesight, a system of bumps was invented by a guy named Louis Braille to represent letters and word.
Braille code, started in 1824 when Louis was just 15. Nowadays, it's a simple 3x2 box of pixels and gives 64 possibilities. I just find it amazing that someone can learn to read like that.
Today is World Braille Day
No comments:
Post a Comment