I blame Edison

[adrienmundi]

Had Tesla's technology become standard, flourescents wouldn't flicker, and I'd fit more easily into the corporate world.

Damned Edison.

Comments

[servingdonuts.livejournal.com]

Standard fluorescent lamps flicker at 120 Hertz, which is generally undectable by the human eye, although studies suggest that there may be other effects besides visual detection. Your computer monitor (unless it's a flat-panel of some kind) probably produces more noticible flicker than the fluorescent lights around you.

Modern high-frequency electronic ballasts cycle much faster than the older standard magnetic ballasts, in the tens of thousands of Hertz, and should have no discernable effects at all. Tesla's fluorescent experiments operated in this high-frequency range as well.

If you're actually observing flicker, even with a standard magnetic ballast, it probably means that either the ballast or the tube is nearing the end of its life and needs to be replaced.

[adrienmundi]

It only really bothers me around my 'migraines', at which point all sorts of electronics bother me, both sound and vision (to the point that I've considered turning off all the breakers in our house before). I do have a flat panel monitor, both at home and at work, but something at the edge of my vision seems exacerbated by flourescents; I'm grasping at straws imagining that time travelling Nikola Tesla would come and save me from inelegant modernity by remaking the world in his image.

[servingdonuts.livejournal.com]

I, too, long to live in a world with broadcast power and giant robots. It would be much cooler. :)

Sorry to hear about your migraines. Electronics of all sorts definitely make noise all over the spectrum, from fan whir to transistor hum, and when I can't tune it out it drives me nuts. Maybe during your episodes you're becoming hyper-aware of your surroundings, rather than simply hyper-sensitive to them in a physiological sense? Regardless of ballast frequency, fluorescents put out light of a different spectrum than natural sunlight, and people are very good at noticing (consciously or not) subtle differences in light and color.

[adrienmundi]

I do become hyperaware of my surroundings; sometimes I can't tell if I'm getting tactile hallucinations, or hyperawareness of a certain patch of skin, for instance, and smell is even more pronounced.

If we had flying cars with sweeping fins, things would be better.

[arcticturtle.livejournal.com]

I'm grasping at straws imagining that time travelling Nikola Tesla would come and save me from inelegant modernity by remaking the world in his image.
If anybody will have been able to do it, it will have been Tesla.

It might take him a while to get back here, though. He's probably having a blast in the sixty-fourth century.

[celticmoni.livejournal.com]

Don't dis my 'homeboy'. ;)

(Edison grew up in my hometown.)

[adrienmundi]

I like the phonograph and its descendants, but I think Tesla was onto something with the stability and safety of direct current. Plus, Tesla generators.

[grendel317.livejournal.com]

Goddamned Edison. I truly cannot abide flourescent light. I get horrible headaches, and it makes everything look wan and sick.

[elgecko.livejournal.com]

Westinghouse and Tesla were the AC guys. Tesla developed the mechanisms for transformation, generation, transmission, and application of alternating current.

Edison championed Direct Current as cleaner and more stable, as well as safer. There's one funny incident in which Edison's team developed the electric chair for the State of New York, specifying it should run on AC, in part to put it in the public mind that AC is dangerous. I'd be much happier if the world ran on DC, and generated it locally.

The lot of it was known as the War of Currents (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Currents)

I'm in the corp world and have a lot of the same visual / perceptive problems you describe. I can hear 60Hz all around me and that's ok, but the 120Hz harmonic that the fluorescents use drives me mad. I typically request that they disable the fluorescents near me and I have an incandescent or halogen at my desk. MOST places are accommodating. Another thing that helps is cranking up monitor refresh rates as far as they will go. I run my current setup at 75Hz, non-interlaced, which is good enough. LCD's are even better and the technology doesn't work in the same way and doesn't create flicker issues. Hope that helps!

[adrienmundi]

You're absolutely right; I always misremember Tesla as the DC guy, for some reason.

Most days, the flicker/hum doesn't bother me, but when I'm off, it's painfully oppressive. Generally if I can step outside for a few minutes, it'll help me "recalibrate".

Unfortunately, flourescents full during all business hours are some (accenture jackal) managers ideas of 'appropriate'...