A Jeopardy! error? Horrors!

[Zenster]

I wonder if Stanley founded the famous transformer manufacturing firm, Stancor?

[Musicat]

It appears that the Jeopardy! staff don’t read their own forums, and their mods don’t, either. A request for an answer from a mod in one thread has gone unreplied to for 9 days.

Big diff from good ol’ SDMB, eh?

[Walloon]

Jeopardy! does occasionally invite back contestants when a judging error works against the contestant. But I’ve never seen them take action when a judging error works in the contestant’s favor. Maybe they send goons to the contestant’s house and shake him down for cash?

[whitetho]

*Originally posted by Q.E.D. *
**Not only that, but the Fleming Valve wasn’t invented until 1904. Prior to that, there had been no way to convert AC to DC. **

The Fleming Valve was the first practical method for converting the high-frequency currents of radio (say 100 kilohertz-plus), but the much lower frequencies used by Alternating Current could be readily converted by mechanical means.

From page 121 of volume VI of the 1911 edition of Cyclopedia of Applied Electricity:

One of the earliest instances of the use of a three-phase transmission to a substation, for conversion to direct current of an Edison system, was in Chicago, where, in 1897, a 250-KW. inverse rotary converter, which converted direct current of 250 volts to three-phase 25-cycle currents was installed at the Harrison Street station. By means of step-up transformers, this pressure was raised to 2,250 volts, the pressure of the transmission. In the substation on Wabash Avenue, near Twenty-seventh Street, this voltage was stepped down again; and, after passing through the rotary converters, the current was fed into the direct-current system at 115 volts, one rotary being connected to each side of the Edison system. Such was the humble beginning of the very extensive system of high-tension transmission lines and substations, which, at quadruple the initial voltage, is now in operation in Chicago.
    In the same year there was installed in Brooklyn, N. Y, a similar transmission system with a rotary converter substation. Here the current was generated at 6,600 volts, 25 cycles, three-phase, at the Union station, a similar system to that operated by the New York Edison Company. In the magnificent Waterside station of this latter company, there are at present eleven 5,500 H.P. vertical engines, each driving a 4,500-K.W. three-phase 25-cycle 6,600-volt alternator. A 5,000-K.W. Curtis turbo-generator is being installed, and there is room for four more. This will make a total rated capacity of 75,000 K.W., all power being generated as alternating current for transmission to rotary converter substations, from which it will feed into the Edison three-wire direct-current system.

[mobo85]

Jeopardy! sometimes makes mistakes. I once saw a show with an “Oops, we goofed” category correcting some mistakes they made, including one I had noticed: erroneously stating “Ford To City: Drop Dead*” was a New York Post headline (it was actually in the Daily News).

[sub]*This episode recorded before the events of September 11, 2001[/sub]