ELECTRICAL GENERATION ON THE OLD WORLDS
By; Speaker Gerald A. Polley
The question arose the other day on how
electricity was generated on The Old Worlds. Well, in the
early ages they all went through the same evolution.
Electricity was generated by hydro plants, or, plants burning
some kind of fuel. Then they went to nuclear and fusion
generators. But in the later ages all these plants were
replaced by wankle generators.
The Hashons and The Peepians already had them in primitive forms
when they met the Havens.
A wankle, (don't ask me to translate the name into English, it's
impossible!) was the core of a space ship's anti gravity drive.
It was about as big as the original volkswagons. Inside it were
two microscopic pieces of dense matter that had tremendous
gravitational attraction. Within the wankle electronic
fields were created that caused the polarity of thse masses to
reverse, so they began to repel each other instead of attracting
each other. As energy was fed into the wankle the repelling
force became stronger and stronger. If the wankle was
inside a ship with a steel frame and hull this energy was
transmitted to the hull and caused the ship to be repelled from
any gravitational force within its vacinity that it's generator
could cancel out, therefore, providing thrust that could lift a
good sized ship off a planet, and a considerable distance into
space. But the wankles had a strange side effect. As
they produced more and more anti-gravity they also produced more
and more electricity! The energy fed into them was somehow
multiplied a hundred fold by the fields within the wankle,
and built up on its internal surfaces. This electricity had
to be drained off and dispelled into space, in order for the
wankle to operate efficiently.
When this was discovered wankles became the power generators in
every city. They had to be fastened down to bedrock so the
entire power plant wouldn't float away! And, their
gravitational effect had to be disipated so it would not effect
the surrounding city. But the power they produced was
abundant and required no fuel. You simply drained off a
small amount of the power you produced, fed it back into the
wankle and it produced more power! You just had to be very
careful you didn't overload your transmission systems.
The electricity the wankles produced was direct current, not
alternating current. So, eventually, on all the worlds,
alternating current was phased out, and everything was powered by
direct current. Hopefully humans, in time, will develop
very similar technology.
Oh, I should note power plants were also popular recreational
areas, especially to children, as they loved floating around in
the negative gravity zones created over the power plants where
everyone, and, everything was weightless...an additional source
of income for the power producers, as they charged a minimul fee
to float around for a couple of hours.