GC: n
CT: One of Tesla’s legacies (and that of his business partner George Westinghouse, boss of the Westinghouse Electrical Company) is that most of the appliances we have in our homes are specifically designed to run from AC power. Appliances that need DC but have to take power from AC outlets need an extra piece of equipment called a rectifier, typically built from electronic components called diodes, to convert from AC to DC.
An inverter does the opposite job and it’s quite easy to understand the essence of how it works. Suppose you have a battery in a flashlight and the switch is closed so DC flows around the circuit, always in the same direction, like a race car around a track. Now what if you take the battery out and turn it around. Assuming it fits the other way, it’ll almost certainly still power the flashlight and you won’t notice any difference in the light you get—but the electric current will actually be flowing the opposite way. Suppose you had lightning-fast hands and were deft enough to keep reversing the battery 50–60 times a second. You’d then be a kind of mechanical inverter, turning the battery’s DC power into AC at a frequency of 50–60 hertz.
S: http://www.explainthatstuff.com/how-inverters-work.html (last access: 22 December 2014)
N: 1. From verb to invert, 1530s, from Middle French invertir or directly from Latin invertere “turn upside down, turn about,” from in- “in, on” + vertere “to turn”.
First Known Use of inverter: 1611.
A device for converting direct current into alternating current.
2. Solar inverters are responsible for transforming DC to AC power from a source such as a solar panel in a home, office, store, RV, or boat setting. Once the inverter converts the power to AC it can be used to power typical appliances, gadgets and lights.
S: 1. OED – http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=invert&searchmode=none (last access: 22 December 2014); MW – http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/inverter (last access: 22 December 2014). 2. http://www.pvpower.com/solar-inverters.aspx (last access: 22 December 2014).
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