Step-Up Transformer
East Pyne Hall-Princeton University
During my boyhood, my brother and I owned model train and slot-car racing systems. These systems were powered by what is now technically known as ‘step-down’ transformers, which reduced our household electric current’s voltage to a level that was sufficient enough to operate the slot cars and train locomotives but safe enough so that we would not suffer a serious electrical shock if we were to accidentally touch the rails or medal stripes of our slot-car and rail systems.
During my childhood trips to Hartford, I liked to marvel at the great power powerhouse that generated electricity that would ultimately reach my home and many others. Hartford had its big house in that city’s ‘South Meadows’, which I could easily spot from the nearby Charter Oak Bridge. It was then run by the Hartford Electric Light Company. It had a nearby transformer station, which featured not a ‘step down’ transformer but a ‘step-up’ transformer that would raise the voltage produced by the power plant and connect with the high-voltage transmission lines that criss-crossed my home state. When a high-tension line reached an area that was to be provided with electrical service, a ‘sub-station’ featuring a ‘step-down’ transformer would reduce the transmission line’s voltage to the level sufficient enough to power homes and businesses. I soon learned the capital importance of transformers whenever a thunderstorm occurred and my home’s electrical service was cut. A lightning strike of a sub-station was the most frequent cause of the blackout.
In addition to my admiration of Hartford’s great electrical power plant, I also admired another power plant, which was located about fifteen miles east of my boyhood home. A highlight of a special Sunday afternoon drive was a drive through the campus of the University of Connecticut, which was located in the Storrs neighborhood of Mansfield. The University of Connecticut was, and still is, a major intellectual power plant. It is often said that going to college or university is a ‘transformative’ experience. There is some validity to this saying. A college or university is a step-up transformer whose mission is to raise the intellectual voltage of our young minds and to transmit the vital current of advanced knowledge to our society as a whole. The towers of our universities are as deserving of our admiration as the stacks of our electrical power plants.
During this summer, consider a visit to your local university and check out its intellectual ‘transformers’ such as its library and chapel. Visit its affiliated bookstore and skim the pages of books written by that university’s professors. Our colleges and universities are enduring a season of electrical storms generated by the twin clouds of AI and politics that threaten to cripple their transformers. As you relax on a college lawn or check out a university’s museum, consider this question: Can our nation endure an intellectual blackout?