Every one talks about the lightbulb. But in fact Edison put just as much effort in the covering over wires. He had specs of how much acid and bases they they could withstand. High and low temperature requirements. The people who he bought from told him he was crazy. Tesla who was on a different level as an inventor never thought much about wire coverings but bought whatever Edison came up with.
Edison didn’t come up with anything, really. He and Steve Jobs have more in common than he and Tesla.
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Tesla knew materials and their chemistry and other properties, and would pick materials that seemed best suited to the task.
Edison was described as having “the diligence of a bumblebee” and would try hundreds if not thousands of different materials including crystallised maple syrup if it were readily available. Ie, shotgunning different things to see if they hit.
Most high tension cables are uncoated.
Hell, even the feeder cables on this block are (now) uncoated.
Few years ago, a tree yanked down the wires on the block, and you could see the shiite just melting off them.
After restringing them, nothing, just nekkid cables.
I wouldn’t want to be a little creature trying to span one to another, but…
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The man ran CAD/CAM in his head before there were computers.
It makes sense if you think about it.
The amount of insulation required to insulate properly is untenable for anything that will be hung/strung over any appreciable distance. It’s a little iffy in the short distance between a large ship and the pier for shore power. When you’re going over vastly longer distances between poles/towers, that “iffy” inflates to “nonfeasible”
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Edison did not invent the lightbulb, he refined the work of others to produce the first commercially-viable one.
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