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Blame all those cheeky buggers who built machines powered by steam engines or water turbines. They basically built their machines to run on whatever was availab

Blame all those cheeky buggers who built machines powered by steam engines or water turbines. They basically built their machines to run on whatever was available. Got a waterwheel doing 1000RPM and you need a big saw attached to it? Your saw will be running at 1000RPM (~16Hz). So many crazy machines were built before there was either a need or an effective way to standardize anything power related. Keep in mind that many kinds of manipulations of electricity are easy and cheap now, but that certainly wasn't the case when people started converting from steam/water to electricity!

cr0sh 9y ago
> So many crazy machines were built before there was either a need or an effective way to standardize anything power related. One of my favorite, somewhat related, such machinery was those multi-pole "generators" that were used to create carrier waves for radio transmission between the thin era of spark-gaps and vacuum tube oscillators.
- spqr0a1 9y ago
  Called an Alexanderson alternator for those curious. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexanderson_alternator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexanderson_alternator
mirimir 9y ago
> Got a waterwheel doing 1000RPM and you need a big saw attached to it? Your saw will be running at 1000RPM (~16Hz). Most "waterwheels" turned far more slowly than 1000 rpm. More like a few hundred at most. They used pulleys and belts, and eventually CVTs. Edit: http://www.alternative-energy-tutorials.com/hydro-energy/waterwheel-design.html http://www.alternative-energy-tutorials.com/hydro-energy/wat...