Death Lurks in Live Wires

A Famous Electrician Discusses a Vital Topic.

CHIEF POINTS OF PERIL

Nikola Tesla Tells the Non-Expert How to Avoid Dangers — Metallic Paint is a Conductor — Scientists Seeking to Save Life.

Pittsburg Dispatch.

Electricity has been a great blessing to mankind, but it has also proved a new source of danger, especially in large cities. That it is as fearful as it is wonderful is a truth that has not escaped the greatest minds in the electrical world. While man, eager to possess such a powerful ally, has welcomed it, not alone into the business world, but into his home, the layman has failed to study its varying moods and death-dealing proclivities. Any one with average intelligence does not care to tempt fate in the shape of a sizzling live wire, but they are daily running unconscious risks of being ushered across the borderland of eternity through ignorance of the remarkable ways and means by which the electric current may travel.

It was in order to gain more knowledge of the hidden dangers, especially in large cities, where its very general use has tended to bring about a disregard for its attendant dangers, that the writer called on several eminent electricians. Nikola Tesla, whose fame needs no mention here, was found in his shirt sleeves, bending over an “X” ray apparatus in his den of wonders, more properly speaking, his laboratory, on East Houston street, New York City, when the writer called, and by way of introducing the subject referred to the case of George Collet, a merchant, an account of whose remarkable death was telegraphed all over the country. A short piece of gilded molding, acting as a conductor of the fiery fluid, brought about the death of Mr. Collet.

He was stricken dead while in the act of fixing an arc light, something that he had done many times before without any harmful effects. In this instance, however, he used a strip of moulding about five feet long. It was gilded, but the gilt was thoroughly dry, yet, according to the physicians and electricians who saw the body after death, acted as the messenger of death, by conducting electricity into the body. The circuit was complete, as Collet was standing on an iron support at the time.

That so simple an agency as dry gilt paint proved sufficient as a conductor of the deadly fluid was a surprise to many, but Nikola Tesla said:

“Every metallic paint is a conductor of electricity, and it is only one of the many dangers to which persons unaccustomed to dealing with that fluid are subject. You cannot call it a new danger, as it has existed of course ever since electricity was first put to practical use. It is, however, a new instance of the fatal result of carelessness in dealing with it.”

“Are there any new dangers attending the use of electricity?” was asked.

“No new dangers but the ever-existing danger of death from that source is being almost daily instanced in one part of the country or another, in some such manner as Collet was killed,” he explained.

“Even experienced linemen must be always on their guard to preserve their lives. Damp wood is a conductor of electricity and the damper the wood the greater the danger. The most careful persons in handling electricity are electricians who are constantly experimenting with it. It is their very knowledge of the terrific force of it which makes them so cautious.

“You can say,” said Mr. Tesla, after a moment’s thought, and an injunction that his remarks must not be viewed in the light of an alarmist, “that the great minds in the sphere of electricity are constantly seeking to minimize the danger of high voltage in cities. They are striving to render it as harmless as it was in the hands of the Greeks, for therein lies a discovery that will be as great a boon to mankind as its manifold benefits.”

“Down in the vast cellars of the Western Union building in New York, there are thousands of live wires, the end of every one, if exposed, more deadly than the sting of any snake, and yet Mr. Tesla declared that there was less danger there than there would be in a building where there were perhaps only two or three inoffensive looking wires.

“Any one is infinitely more safe in an iron building amidst scores of wires than in a brick or wooden building,” he declared, “because the very proximity of so many wires would tend to draw the electric current one from another, and the iron would draw it from all, thus minimizing the danger to any person in a building where electric wires are in use. Death might of course be found in a gilt picture frame, providing the current was strong enough and the conditions permitted a ground connection. It would be perfectly safe to touch any object that might be charged with electricity provided the feet did not touch the floor, or that the latter was of dry wood, carpeted or covered with some other non-conductor. But if the floor should be of iron or other metallic substance, or of wet wood, the necessary ground connection would be there, and the current would pass through the body. This is a subject which should be generally taught.

“The newspapers frequently record the actions of horses in rainy weather,” continued Mr. Tesla, “prancing about in pools of water in the vicinity of subways from whence electricity has escaped in quantities sufficient to charge the water, which, coming in contact with the iron shod hoofs of the animals, makes them dance. In many of the Western cities where electricity is just being introduced into general use for all sorts of purposes, accidents of this character are of common occurrence, and frequently a horse receives a fatal shock.”