Talk:Topsy (elephant)

message: What kind of voltage did Edison use? Cburnett 16:04, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm curious about this as well.  I originally heard it was DC, but many more sources since then have said AC, which I believe is correct, though I can't be sure.-Triviaa 00:26, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The contemporary newspaper article said 6,600, which was probably the high voltage side of the AC supply at the location.Edison 00:50, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Recall that Edison was in the midst of a battle with Westinghouse in which Edison claimed that DC was far safer than AC.  His filming and distributing Topsy's death by AC was doubtless a way of slamming the dangers of Westinghouse's AC. 64.30.203.214 (talk) 01:22, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Voltage

message: Both 1875 births and 1903 deaths are subcategories of :Category:People... which an elephant obviously isn't... so this needs to be recategorized... I'm not sure how. gren グレン 17:29, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Categories 

message: Could someone clarify that either Topsy ate the carrot but was not affected or did not eat it at all (the latter is mentioned in the article)?  I've heard both sides. --65.190.140.201 01:11, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The contemporary newspaper article said the poisoned carrots were fed to the elephant before the electrocution. If 2.8 mg/kg will kill a person,per  and if elephants have a similar sensitivity, then 480 grams would kill a 171000 kg or 188 ton elephant. The largest Elephant on record weighed 12,000 kg, so it would have been overkill by a factor of at least 14, or eating 1/14 of the offered poisoned carrots would likely have killed her. A higher dose would have killed her more quickly. Edison 01:01, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Note that potassium cyanide itself isn't directly poisonous. It reacts with stomach acids to produce HCN / prussic acid, which is. Not being familiar with elephant digestion, I don't know if they're more or less effective at releasing the acid through the stomach, but one should be wary of simple extrapolations. The elephant was not dead and not particularly distressed before electrocution, it was dead afterwards. If Edison had used poison to make sure of killing her, he'd also been either very lucky with the timing, or it was superfluous. Andy Dingley (talk) 18:33, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Poisoned Carrot? 

message: I can't really find any sources on the internet naming this elephant "Topsy the Elephant" (rather than simply "Topsy"). Anyone got any sources for this? --Oldak Quill 23:07, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 
The result of the debate was move to Topsy (elephant — Mets501  (talk)  19:12, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Name 

message: Add "* Support" or "* Oppose" followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your opinion with ~~~~
*Oppose, the article barely even mentions the film as is and I'm thinking it would probably be better to have a seperate article for the film anyway. Perhaps a better title for this would be Topsy (elephant)? Recury 17:51, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Survey

message: An anon keeps adding back a link to a constrained comic which happens to feature a dead elephant image. This isn't appropriate; I'm going to remove it, unless there's a compelling reason not to (which there isn't). Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 15:29, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Inappropriate external link 

message: I have no additional references myself for the electrocution of Topsy, but I do think this article ought to mention within its text the reason for her death by electrocution, and for its being filmed by Edison.
Obviously the easiest and cleanest way to kill a rogue elephant that needs to be eliminated would have been to simply shoot her.
Equally obviously, however, her owners, the Forepaugh Circus at Coney Island, were interested in making Topsy's execution into a public spectacle, with their initial suggestion of hanging(!) to death a three-ton elephant (http://www.roadsideamerica.com/pet/topsy.html). Surely the business of the carrots laced with cyanide was also a gimmick meant to call attention to the supposed difficulty in killing such a huge and resilient beast.
I have no idea how all this first came to Edison's attention, but as mentioned above in a response to the Voltage section of this Talk page, he must have immediately recognized the propaganda value of vividly showing the great danger inherent in Westinghouse's rival process of alternating current, as opposed to Edison's much safer direct current. See Wikipedia's article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Currents for further discussion of this.
The point is that except for the value of creating a spectacle for the benefit of both Topsy's owners and for Edison, and the spectacle being filmed for exhibition around the country, Topsy would be entirely unknown today, just another anonymous rogue elephant needing to be "put down", and there would be no entry here in Wikipedia for her.  It's her death by electrocution, and the filming of it, that is her only claim to fame or notoriety.
This article does presently have a link to "War of Currents" in its See Also section, but I believe some discussion of the reason for Topsy's death by electrocution should be integrated into this article itself.
Edison's 1903 film "Electrocuting an Elephant" is approximately 1.5 minutes long, and is available in DVD format on disc 1 of "Edison: The Invention of the Movies", a 4-disc set issued by Kino Video.
Milkunderwood (talk) 20:40, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  In your edits today, which have been reverted, you used numerous tags throughout the article and within references, disrupting the formatting of the article. These should if appropriate, have been condensed into a single or more hatnotes tagging the entire article. However, rather than provide any references countering the statements in the article, you claimed the references provided were unreliable or self-published. The two references you specifically and repeatedly tagged were (1) the book by Michael Daly, published by Grove Press,  clearly not self-published as you claim, and (2) the Thomas Edison papers at Rutgers University. While you may disagree with the content, that does not make the sources either unreliable or self-published. Please provide verifiable references to support your claims of bias and read Wikipedia policies on self-published sources and unreliable sources before using those tags. Thank you. NotaBene 鹰百利  Talk 18:51, 2 March 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Direct vs Alternating Current 

message: I have seen a much better quality video of this and I am trying to find the link. The contrast is much higher.188.30.203.67 (talk) 12:15, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quality of the video 

message: Wikipedia Article claims that Topsy killed an abusive trainer.  Source linked specifically says it was a visitor to Coney Island that fed a lit cigarette to the elephant that was killed. 24.107.181.169 (talk) 04:06, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  citation and Wikipedia mismatch 

message: An editor recently deleted inclusion of this incident in popular culture.  I think the inclusion in popular culture is an interesting and informative section and should be reinstated.  Please don't get me wrong - this electrocution is a horrific incident and should not be celebrated, but, if others have chosen to include this in modern culture, it says several things about human behaviour.__DrChrissy (talk) 17:37, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Trivial mentions in trivia sections and material lacking reliable sourcing in any section can be deleted. So its obvious why the whole section was deleted, it didn't pass Wikipedia's thresholds for inclusion. If you think there is something that was non-trivial and has a reliable source, add the item and the source. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 21:56, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: To be honest, I did not check the sources.  Of course I agree that unsourced material should be removed. Thanks for pointing this out.__DrChrissy (talk) 23:52, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Added an "In Popular Culture" section for the entire episode of the cartoon series Bob's Burgers which predominantly featured Topsy and was titled "Topsy".  I promise I'm not making this up, and please check my source if you don't believe me. Feel free to edit wording to flow more smoothly.  Cawmaster (talk) 05:02, 08 April 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: The problem is not "does it exist?", the problem is "is it encyclopedic?". Articles do not list miscellaneous information, they report what some other source said about it. In this case are we trying to say Topsy is a Meme? If so WP:RS would need to be cited to that effect and added to an article section. Please read WP:TRIVIA. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 13:19, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: It seemed decently large enough of a reference (an entire episode of a popular TV show dedicated to the topic) to warrant mention in this article.   It's not even a minor reference, the episode is named 'Topsy'.  If TV shows aren't "encyclopedic" apparently any wikipedia page on them or referencing them does not belong in this database?  I'm not arguing this is a meme, nor does an entire episode of a TV show make it a meme.  Not sure of your interpretation of what memes are, but this is not it. This all seems incredibly pedantic, but if you feel your opinion overrules the inclusion of any major information you deem 'unencyclopedic' in an article already lacking in subject matter, so be it. -Cawmaster (talk) 07:35, 10 April 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Citing TV shows to prove the show exists is not encyclopedic. Citing a third party reliable source about the topic in question (what is the topic?) is encyclopedic. That is what is needed re: Bob's Burgers. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 13:57, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

text: Fountains is correct. Wikipedia is not a repository of all that is True, or it would contain an account of what I ate for lunch. Wikipedia contains that which is notable and encyclopedic, the summary of which is WP:V. We're looking for things that third-party reliable sources report on, not things you watched on TV once. --Dweller (talk) 14:04, 10 April 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I did a major expansion of the article and put back "In popular culture" section in the recommended prose style. Bob's Burgers is back in as an example of what another source noticed about an Edison/popular view. Since the episode has its own Wiki page and seems to be unchallenged for Notability it should be mentioned somewhere in the article, at least "See also". Prose insertion with a context explanation seems better than a blank drop. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 22:37, 11 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  In culture 

message: The volt is not a measure of current.  (Current is measured in amps.)  It is incorrect to speak of "volts of current."  Please see the following references:
*http://lab-01.com/wiki/doku.php?id=science-electricity
*http://www.diffen.com/difference/Current_vs_Voltage
*http://www.reprise.com/host/electricity/voltage.aspRichard27182 (talk) 05:59, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Volts of current" 

message: Rather than playing the electrocution vid <https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/Edison_-_Electrocuting_an_Elephant.ogv> in my browser, I downloaded it and played it through VLC. I noticed it seems to repeat maybe 8 or 9 times identically. Size is > 77meg. 
Is there a reason for this duplication, and should it be removed, and if so, how? 78.144.73.120 (talk) 13:42, 28 November 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  video repeats, which increases load on wiki back end