tagged w/ Thomas Edison
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Thomas Edison’s direct current technology is gaining popularity as engineers are finding that it can carry electricity over long distances with less loss of power than alternating current.
The revival of DC for long-distance power transmission began in 1954 when the Swedish company ASEA, a predecessor of ABB, the Swiss maker of power and automation equipment, linked the island of Gotland to mainland Sweden with high-voltage DC lines.
Now, more than 145 projects using high-voltage DC, known as HVDC, are under way worldwide.
While HVDC equipment remains expensive, it becomes economical for high-voltage, high-capacity runs over long distances, said Anders Sjoelin, president of power systems for North America at ABB.
Over a distance of a thousand miles, an HVDC line carrying thousands of megawatts might lose 6 to 8 percent of its power, ABB said. A similar AC line might lose 12 to 25 percent.
Direct-current transmission is also better suited to handle the electricity produced by solar and wind farms, which starts out as direct current.
In most situations, solar or wind energy has to be converted, and sometimes reconverted, into AC before it can be used. With HVDC, conversions can be reduced. DC grids can also more easily manage the variable output that occurs, say, when a storm hits or the wind dies.
http://www.siemens.com/about/pool/business/energy/e_hvdc_458px.jpgThomas Edison’s direct current technology is gaining popularity as engineers are... more
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Lessons learned in classrooms or even through work experience are extremely important. That said, those learned outside the classroom or boardroom — the real-world essentials — are critical to success as well. In his new book, The 4 Essentials: A Path to Success and Happiness, successful entrepreneur Cliff Michaels brings to life what he calls a Real-World MBA, a Master’s in Basic Abilities.
In The 4 Essentials, Cliff Michaels takes readers on a journey of success, failure, and purpose with lessons to be gleaned from each. Michaels complements this journey with wisdom drawn from books, movies, childhood heroes, and virtual mentors from Leonardo daVinci and Thomas Edison to modern-day icons such as Oprah Winfrey, Richard Branson, Bill Gates, and Blake Mycoskie. Passionately written and thought provoking, Michaels illustrates why success is not predicated solely on degrees, intelligence, or opportunity.
The 4 Essentials has already gained recognition by leaders in education and entrepreneurship:
"Cliff's 4 Essentials are a great framework for students to succeed in school and life."
Bill Milliken – Founder, Communities in Schools, Author, The Last Dropout
“Cliff Michaels delivers a powerful path to profits, passion, and purpose.”
Tony Hsieh – CEO, Zappos.com, NY Times #1 Bestseller, Delivering Happiness
“By applying ‘The 4 Essentials’— life skills, action strategies, core values, and purpose principles — anyone can fill gaps in education, intelligence, or socio-economics that may be holding them back,” says Michaels. “That’s not to say traditional education isn’t important. It certainly is. But teaching vocation skills without people skills or business excellence without purpose principles is fundamentally flawed.”
As a real estate broker, investor, high-tech CEO, and strategist, Michaels has successfully navigated the high flying 80's, recovering 90's, and 21st century booms and busts. His firm has produced more than $500 million in sales and he’s a former president and 10-year board member of the Young Entrepreneurs Organization Los Angeles Chapter.
Before hitting his stride, Michaels’ journey began as an aspiring entrepreneur at the University of Southern California. While cutting his entrepreneurial teeth with street-wise real estate mentors, Michaels noticed a serious gap between traditional education and basic abilities of peak performance. This fueled philosophical debates with students and professors, leading Michaels to conduct research on “Real-World Essentials Critical to Success,” especially in competitive environments. His research and personal journey supported Michaels’ belief that basic life and business strategies must be taught in concert. This was the inspiration for The 4 Essentials.
“Based on my research, The 4 Essentials are keys to achievement – personally and professionally,” continues Michaels. “I’m convinced anyone willing to Master Basic Abilities can find their path to success and happiness.”
In addition to his book on The 4 Essentials, Michaels has developed online e-courses and tools on topics from self-discovery and team building, to communication, people skills, conflict resolution, sales, negotiations, and business planning; among others (coming this Fall). Additionally, Michaels launched The Giving Back Mission as a companion to The 4 Essentials. With each purchase at CliffMichaels.com, free books and courses are donated to students with 10% proceeds also going to charities. Initial targets include: Charity Water, Make-A-Wish Foundation, Communities in Schools, Doctors Without Borders, and Habitat for Humanity.
The 4 Essentials is now available for pre-order and will be released in paperback January 2012. FREE Chapters are available and anyone who pre-orders the book gains exclusive access to a full PDF Online version of The 4 Essentials at www.CliffMichaels.com. 50% Off Michaels’ E-course on Self Discovery & Team Mission is also available when pre-ordering the book (Courses come with result-oriented tools like goal and project-planning forms).Lessons learned in classrooms or even through work experience are extremely important.... more
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On Friday, December 17, 2010 Prestige Image PR announced that Dr. Mark Valinsky, doctor, actor, producer, photographer, author, black belt and more, was interviewed on the HealthyLife.Net Radio Network show “The Millionaire Mindset” by creator Jim DeCicco. The topic, “Entrepreneurship – Focusing and Branding Your Creativity”.
http://diversitynewspublications.com/2010/12/mark-valinsky-actor-producer-interviewed-on-millionaire-mindset-being-an-entrepreneur/On Friday, December 17, 2010 Prestige Image PR announced that Dr. Mark Valinsky,... more
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You could probably say, these were the first stunt men or the first Jackasses of their era. Definitely awesome old school footage, I mean look how far we've come along!
Performed by Reginald J. Extreme, Esq. Yes, that "Extreme"
Filmed by Thomas Edison (1899 - 1901)You could probably say, these were the first stunt men or the first Jackasses of their... more
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The lights went out on Thomas Edison 78 years ago this week, but luckily there are still inventors out there flooding YouTube with tons of really pointless inventions.
Viral Video Film School is a recurring segment on the weekly television show infoMania. In each episode of VVFS, Professor Brett Erlich teaches you valuable skills in the discipline of Viral Video making. So sit down, take notes, and try not to piss him off. For more Brett visit http://current.com/viral-video-film-school-im/ and Current TV.
infoMania is a half-hour satirical news show that airs on Current TV. The show puts a comedic spin on the 24-hour chaos and information overload brought about by the constant bombardment of the media. Hosted by Conor Knighton and co-starring Brett Erlich, Sarah Haskins, Ben Hoffman, Bryan Safi and Sergio Cilli, the show airs on Thursdays at 10 pm Eastern and Pacific Times and can be found online at http://current.com/infomania/ or on Current TV. And make sure to check out our facebook profile for special features at http://infomaniafacebook.com.The lights went out on Thomas Edison 78 years ago this week, but luckily there are... more
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“The Birth of Cinema” is a wonderful short film that shows us some of the earliest pioneers and films in the history of motion pictures. Like fun house mirrors, motion pictures over the past hundred years have reflected, challenged, influenced and altered our visions of ourselves and the world. Today, moving pictures are so much a part of modern life that it's hard to imagine a time before their invention. “The Birth of Cinema” takes us back to see some of the pioneering moving picture inventors; it gives us a look at some of the important first films and at many of the popular actors in the early days of film, including Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks.
This detailed article includes a number of great vintage photographs, as well as the delightful short film, “The Birth of Cinema.”“The Birth of Cinema” is a wonderful short film that shows us some of the... more
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"On May 15, the Eiffel Tower, the world's most celebrated monument and the iconic symbol of Paris, celebrates its 120th anniversary. Strikingly, the fame and allure of this improbable wrought-iron masterpiece have only grown with the passing decades. The tower, built by railway-bridge engineer Gustave Eiffel, has become a ubiquitous global image connoting modernity and glamour, while visitors who experience it firsthand are still amazed by the tower's potent mixture of spare elegance, immensity and complexity. And when the Eiffel Tower opens to its adoring public each day, the structure comes to life as crowds gaily clamber up and down its stairs, eating, drinking and flirting on the three platforms high in the sky. Open to the elements, enveloped in Eiffel's distinctive design, visitors can see and touch parts of the 18,038 pieces of iron (welded together with 2.5 million rivets) as they ascend heavenward.
The tower is so beloved that few today remember the storm of vitriol, mockery and lawsuits provoked by its selection as the startling centerpiece of the 1889 Paris Exposition Universelle. (One of the losing entries was a gigantic working guillotine!) Even as Eiffel was breaking ground by the Seine River in February 1887, 47 of France's greatest names decried in a letter to Le Temps the "odious column of bolted metal." What person of good taste, this flock of intellectuals asked, could endure the thought of this "dizzily ridiculous tower dominating Paris like a black and gigantic factory chimney, crushing [all] beneath its barbarous mass"? The revered painters Ernest Meissonier and William-Adolphe Bouguereau, writers Guy de Maupassant and Alexandre Dumas fils, composer Charles Gounod and architect Charles Garnier all signed this epistolary call to arms, stating that "the Eiffel Tower, which even commercial America would not have, is without a doubt the dishonor of Paris."
The Americans did not hide their chagrin when they learned that at 1,000 feet the Eiffel Tower would dethrone their own 555-foot-tall Washington Monument, finally completed in 1884. Sniffed the New York Times' Paris correspondent: "The French admit [the tower's] originality and value, but they deplore its ugliness . . . au fond, they are not proud to show this gigantic iron structure to strangers. . . . [T]hey vote it an abomination and eyesore." The Timesman insisted that the Washington Monument is "after all, more artistic than the Eiffel Tower." In truth, as the Eiffel Tower rose gracefully into the Parisian sky, its unique modern beauty catapulted it to world acclaim. An entire industry rushed to churn out Eiffel Tower replicas, as Phillip Cate notes in his book "Eiffel Tower: A Tour de Force" -- tiny gold charms, solid chocolate confections, giant garden ornaments, or the myriad images executed in "pen, pencil, and brush, in photo and lithography, in oil and pastel, on paper, canvas, on wood and ivory, on china, steel, and zinc."
From the day the Eiffel Tower first opened on May 15, 1889, at 11:50 a.m., fairgoers flocked to ascend its giddy heights. From high up, they savored the spectacle of Paris looking tiny and the crowds down below coursing through the rococo Exposition, enjoying such novelties as Egyptian belly dancing, Japanese tea houses, Javanese dancers, wine from the world's largest oaken cask (pulled to Paris by 10 pair of oxen), and the miracle of recorded sound at the Edison exhibit...""On May 15, the Eiffel Tower, the world's most celebrated monument and the... more
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A short black and white film produced by Thomas Edison of a fixed gear freesytle rider demonstrating some bar spins and track stands on a stage. A short black and white film produced by Thomas Edison of a fixed gear freesytle rider... more
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An audio historian has stumbled on a static-filled high-pitched trill that could predate Thomas Edison’s 1877 recording of “Mary had a little lamb” as the oldest known recorded human voice. David Giovannoni discovered the extraordinary find while searching for phonautograms, recordings produced by a device invented by Frenchman Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville that created visual recordings of sound waves called phonautographs. The newly-discovered audio is an 1860 French recording of “Au Clair de la Lune” that Giovannoni described as “magical” and “ethereal.”
I personally describe it as "inaudible" and "really effing creepy."
Check out the video to hear the audio.An audio historian has stumbled on a static-filled high-pitched trill that could... more
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In Paris some Americanos discovered a recording of a voice that predates Edison's capture of audio by 17 years. The "phonautogram" was never meant to playback sound, but if you check out the link you can hear a digitized copy of the recording that was dated to April 1860.
How far technology has come. In Paris some Americanos discovered a recording of a voice that predates Edison's... more
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Is piracy good or bad, and can it be stopped?
Author Matt Mason discusses the debate and the history of punk capitalism that is at the foundation of many businesses. His new book sparks the discussion and popularity (presently ranks in the TOP 10 "Free Enterprise" & "Rap" book sales on Amazon.com). Is piracy good or bad, and can it be stopped?
Author Matt Mason discusses the... more
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"A Valentine: Tulips." Valentine's Day is just a great time for kissing and a kissing video. So here are two kissing videos for you: an animated film,"Tulips", and Thomas Edison's 1896 film,"The Kiss." Also, a beautiful photograph of tulips in stunning high-resolution and a music video, Josh Groban singing the moving song, "Broken Vow."
Please enjoy!!"A Valentine: Tulips." Valentine's Day is just a great time for... more
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