Originally published at: Photo of a car undergoing a "lightning test" in 1942 Westinghouse ad | Boing Boing
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My guess is that the wheel bearings got welded together by that zap.
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The ghost of Topsy is seeking her revenge.
25,000,000 volts of electricity were present during the test.
That not what the ad say. It says NATURALLY OCCURRING lightning can reach 25 million volts, and/or 200 thousand amperes.
The claim for what’s going on in that test is three million volts. Tesla was doing about that in 1898, hitting 2.5 million volts. ( History of the Tesla coil - Wikipedia ) Obviously, given power limitations, driving a Tesla coil to produce that much voltage results in a very high electrical potential, but little available current–exactly what you want for an easily photographed impressive looking demo that nevertheless isn’t likely to kill the model.
There’s no question but that power companies do try to build artificial lightning systems that can briefly deliver significant amounts of current at absurd voltages, albeit briefly. But it’s only today that you can easily get three MV and 200 kA, and that only for milliseconds. ( Lightning Testing - Experior Laboratories . You’ll also notice that the discharging bit is not just a big sphere typical of a Van de Graaff generator or Tesla coil, both of which rely on building up and holding on to a significant static charge.)
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Just posting this because – Westinghouse. (/s if you know the joke)
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