Ever since human being started establish improbable affair , doll have been pooping on them , includinghigh - voltage power lines . In the 1920s , Southern California power gridiron was provoke by streams and flow of bird crap .
In therecent issue of Environmental Humanities , account of science professor Etienne Benson traces the shock of shuttlecock on Southern California ’s power power grid . ( Incidentally , Benson also lend us this delightfulhistory of squirrel in U.S. cities . ) Electricity operate so seamlessly with the pass of shift , he writes , that ’s it soft to draw a blank transmission towers have to stand up to active and brawny forces of nature — bird tail included .
The power lines that carry electricity from hydroelectric plants in the Sierra Nevada to Los Angeles were constructed in 1913 . At 241 miles , they were the longest power lines in the world at the time . razzing would perch and after part on the transmission system towers from the kickoff , but the problem of “ flashover ” did n’t become keen until the 1920s , when Southern California Edison upgrade the office line to 220,000 volts .
flashover are basically the outcome of a short circuit . Electricity spring from the power occupation and into a alloy transmission tower , setting off a bright blue flash . A flashover could have voltage drops and even mogul outages in L.A. In the summertime of 1923 , these pause were happening every two or three days .
At first , engineers did n’t suspect the birds . “ It was only the opportunity observance , ” write Benson , “ by one of the men in charge of the Big Creek transmittance line , of an bird of Jove leaving behind a string of excrement as it launched from a tower that add weight to hypothesis that so - called bird ‘ streamer ’ might cause flashovers . ”
And so began a engagement of wits with the birds . First , the engineers tried to install bird guards that forbid them from perching on their usual spots above a tower ’s insulators . But the birds only go closer , onto the buckler that protect the dielectric . The towers call for more anti - avian architecture , let in spike and a shit - catching blade pan , which together seemed to help .
It was n’t just the towers themselves that had to change though . Benson detail how redundance was added into the galvanizing storage-battery grid , so that the payload could be automatically shifted in the shell of a flashover . Something as forgettable as bird poop helped exchange not only the physical towers but the entire design of the electrical grid .
[ Environmental Humanities ]
Top image : Benson / Environmental Humanities
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