The fan is the first venture into consumer products for Versa Drives, a Indian manufacturer of alternating-current drives.
With more than 700 patents to his name, Tesla invented radio, the coil transformer, wireless communication, fluorescent lights and the alternating-current motor, which allowed electricity to flow over long distances.
Their job is to convert high-voltage alternating current from the mains into low-voltage direct current for mobile phones, laptops, iPods and other electronic gadgets.
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Although they have not been found to cause any harm, the cables on conventional pylons, which transmit a three-phase alternating current, generate a strong electric field and a continuous buzz of low-frequency radio waves.
At 400 kilovolts, a standard value for long-distance transmission, an alternating current 30 metres (100 feet) from the ground has a fortieth of the loss of a similar cable at ground level.
They can carry five to 20 times more current in the same unit area while reducing the amount of energy lost as heat by 75-97% (depending on whether the current is alternating or direct), even after accounting for all the nitrogen-cooling paraphernalia.
Large-scale electricity transmission usually uses alternating current, in which both current and voltage oscillate.
Even Thomas Edison bet badly, as in his development of direct-current electricity that proved inferior to alternating current.
High-voltage DC can carry power over long distances at lower cost than alternating current, but the transformers still cost too much to make the idea widespread.
Since 2005, the company has stood out in the fast-moving LED industry with an innovation that allows LEDs to be powered by alternating current, or AC, rather than requiring a transformer that turns AC into direct current.
Alternating current can't go very far without having to be pushed along, so it requires power-guzzling substations.
One of the considerations was the relative safety of direct current - the first electric chair seems to have been built (and then used) to prove that alternating current was more of a killer.
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