The central station contains a number of powerful dynamo machines, driven usually by steam power. The positive and negative terminals of the dynamo are put in connection with the positive and negative main conductors which are to supply the district, and from these mains smaller conductors branch off to the houses or lamps. All these conductors are of copper, that metal when pure having seven times the conductivity of iron.
Different methods are in use for keeping the supply of electricity steady in spite of the varying demands made upon it. In some systems of distribution, instead of the two main conductors being one positive and the other negative, each is positive and negative alternately, the reversals taking place some hundreds of times per second. The currents are then said to be “alternating.” When such reversals do not take place, the currents are said to be “direct.”
What was the “Court of Love”?
The “Court of Love” existed in what we call the chivalric period of the middle ages.
It was composed of knights, poets and ladies, who discussed and gave decisions on subtle questions of love and gallantry. The first of these courts was probably established in Provence about the twelfth century. They reached their highest splendor in France, under Charles VI, through the influence of his consort, Isabella of Bavaria, whose court was established in 1380. An attempted revival was made under Louis XIV by Cardinal Richelieu.
The Story of the Addressograph[28]
If you were asked to enumerate the different kinds of clerical work performed in the modern business office, you would probably fail to mention the writing of names. Yet the writing and rewriting of names is as essential in most offices as the addition of figures or the dictation of correspondence.
In fact, names represent the backbone of nearly every business or organization. There is the list of names of those people you sell to; the names of those people you want to sell to; the names of those people you buy from; the names of those people who owe you money; the names of those people to whom you owe money and the names of those people who work for you. Then, lodges, clubs, churches and other organizations must maintain lists of names of their members; and so the different kinds of lists go on ad infinitum.