Mike Keitz wrote:
>
> In the '70s the price of copper was apparently rather high.

That is putting it mildly. In rural areas, there were instances of
people stealing transmission lines to salvage the copper. Live ones,
that is. Go out into the desert, shoot the insulators off, wait for the
sparks to die down, roll it up and get the hell out of there before the
power company crews or cops could arrive.


The company I was working for wound their own high voltage transformers
for high power RF work, so we did some experiments using aluminum. Not
too good, but if push came to shove..  In the same period, molding
compound was difficult to get due to the pertroleum shortages. GE was
attempting to use a furfurol (a corn ensilage derivative) based compound
to mold watthour meter bases. Everyone was relieved when we could go
back to using real copper and real epoxy. Necessity may be the mother of
Invention,  but she is a real bitch. Its a wonder more houses didn't
burn down.


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Bear Technology  Making Montana safe for Grizzlies

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