Today I Learned Electrical

What do you think about when I say renewables? Solar, wind, or hydro? Bio-fuels? How long do you think we've been using renewable energy for? By asking different questions, we see from different focal points. We can get hyper-focused on labelling something. A renewable as a photo-voltaic cell, or the wind. A renewable is simply something that can be constantly replenished. There's no need to reinvent the wheel, just put some paddles on it and stick it in a body of water that flows with enough force in one direction to turn the wheel. Vitruvius was an engineer in ancient Rome from 4000 BC who was credited with inventing the water wheel. In a terrible analogy, he created a motor. A motor takes electrical energy and creates mechanical work out of it.   

Hydro electricity has been around since ancient times. In just a few centuries, the Romans grew to be the greatest empire in European history. They had clean drinking water, public bath houses, proper toilets, laundries, sewers, and industry level food production with water-mills. But the Romans, they went for sensational, that was for sure. They took a system created in 9000 BC by the Assyrian empire and expanded on it. The earliest aqueducts were constructed by lengths of inverted clay tiles and sometimes clay pipes. The Romans took that idea almost 9000 years later in 312 BC and said “We'll see your clay aqueduct and we'll see you a giant stone structure to withstand time. We'll add some extra features on it, like using gravity to power water wheels.” They utilized gravity to their end. Now we look towards ways of using ancient technology to spin turbines. But at the end of the day, money wins. I want to start a non profit! 

I'd pretty much accepted my self diagnosed myself by the time I started getting real answers so when they started telling me things like “You have very unrealistic dreams, a typical trait”, I already knew that! Why's no one on the same page as me? I was quite confused. I think differently so I just looked at where we'd gotten since clay pipes ran across the land following the natural contour of it. To a time and place where we ran water for cities on giant stone structures. To an era where we created water treatment plants to clean water for cities. The ability to plop cities down anywhere. The power to Geo-engineer the earth. “With great power, comes great responsibility,” Uncle Ben. 

We didn't get this far from people saying “You have very unrealistic dreams”. Unrealistic dreams brought the world the Induction motor. Some [arguably] crazy, eccentric man named Nikola Tesla, wanted to give the world free energy. He'd show "magic tricks" to crowds as electricity danced around his skin. He figured out that you could make a rotating magnetic field, and used all the principles that humans had learned up until then. And people wondered how he ended up broke. But that was because he'd found something that money couldn't just buy. He found purpose. I'd gotten this far in life, living it without but an ounce of confidence in myself. If the skies the limit, I'm shooting for the moon now.