dual-use (urls)

[Jim Bell]

From: brian carroll <electromagnetize at gmail.com>

To: cypherpunks at cpunks.org 
Sent: Tuesday, November 19, 2013 10:01 PM
Subject: dual-use (urls)
 


>Shocking Medical Devices From Another Century (via digg)
>http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/11/bakken-museum/?viewall=true

>[&] The Bakken Museum of Electricity in Life
>http://www.thebakken.org/

    In 1978, I visited the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC for the first (and so far, only) time.  They had a display of "quack medical devices", that included a high-voltage AC device attached to glowing neon-bulb-type tubes.  The idea was that these tubes would be pressed against a person's flesh, thus capacitively coupled through the glass, including a glowing light within the tube,  and inducing a mild electrical current.  At the time, I accepted the idea that this was, indeed, an example of a "quack medical device".
   In 1996, I began work at a Vancouver Washington contract-electronic-design/manufacturer firm.  One of the major products that this company made were "TENS" devices.  (Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulators   http://www.tensunits.com/   ).   They were/are intended to reduce chronic pain.  They worked in pretty much the same way that those "quack" early 1900's devices worked:  Cause a AC small current to flow within flesh.  What was thought to be 'quack' in 1978, turned out to not be 'quack' at all!
       Jim Bell
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