File:Electrice sideshow act 1914 - lighting candle with fingers.jpg

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Electrice_sideshow_act_1914_-_lighting_candle_with_fingers.jpg(387 × 282 pixels, file size: 29 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg)

Summary

Description
English: "Electrice - The Girl Who Defies Electricity", a carnival sideshow performer in 1914 who passed high voltage electricity through her body. Here she is lighting a candle with sparks (a brush discharge) shooting from her fingers. The high voltage comes from a Tesla coil visible behind her, connected to the electric chair (right) which she is touching with her left hand. The Tesla coil produces very high voltage; up to several hundred thousand volts, so it can create sparks of several inches, but has very low amperage, and because it is alternating current with a high frequency (in the radio range, 100 kHz to 2 MHz) it does not cause the sensation of electric shock. Although it didn't give her a shock, the sparks could give her skin burns and the act was somewhat uncomfortable, sometimes she would wear copper thimbles on the end of her fingers. It was also very dangerous and could kill her if the coil was misadjusted. Today passing Tesla currents though the body like this, painful or not, is considered extremely hazardous, so DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME.

Caption: Lighting a candle from the finger tips

Alterations to image: skewed image slightly to counteract warping due to curved page when the picture was scanned.
Date
Source Retrieved October 4, 2015 from Electrice, "Doing and Daring for the Public's Pleasure" in Popular Electricity and the World's Advance, Popular Electricity Publishing Co., Chicago, Vol. 6, No. 9, January 1914, p. 1045, fig. 1 on Google Books
Author "Electrice"
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Licensing

Public domain
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United States
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Captions

Carnival performer lighting candle with fingertips

Items portrayed in this file

depicts

January 1914Gregorian

File history

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Date/TimeThumbnailDimensionsUserComment
current13:17, 5 October 2015Thumbnail for version as of 13:17, 5 October 2015387 × 282 (29 KB)ChetvornoUser created page with UploadWizard
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