Re: [OT] British vs. American English
/snip/
Interestingly, when I was a kid, we inherited a relatively old B&W TV
set from my grandmother. The specs said explicitly "110 volts AC/DC"
- there were parts of NYC that were wired with DC, fairly late into
the 1930s and maybe the 40s (I had to check, the first TV stations
went on the air around 1928).
Miles Fidelman
I played a gig on the east side of Manhattan, I think in the 30's
(street numbers) around 1962 or so, and when the fuse in my amp blew, I
found out that the area was still in DC. There was one AC feed in the
building, for a refrigerator, and it was a couple hundred feet away.
Of course I didn't have that kind of extension cord, so I wound up just
plonking on my acoustic-electric guitar, and letting the horns
and drums cover me.
I also know that up in the 60's, on the west side, there was DC into the
1950s--my father worked at the High School of Commerce there,
and there was no AC available at all. When they needed to run a
projector or a wire recorder, they had to use a mechanical converter--
a motor generator--to provide just a few watts of AC.
--doug
--
Blessed are the peacemakers...for they shall be shot at from both sides. --A. M. Greeley
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