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From: roy@phri.nyu.edu (Roy Smith)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics
Subject: Re: Car Battery Rechargers
Message-ID: <1990Oct8.200326.1429@phri.nyu.edu>
Date: 8 Oct 90 20:03:26 GMT
References: <1990Oct4.222556.20668@athena.mit.edu> <63220@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu>
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Organization: Public Health Research Institute, New York City
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willie@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (william hunt) writes:
> Do not be fooled by the colors of the wires in the car, always check the
> + and - marks on the battery or use a volt meter.

	I emphatically agree that you should not rely on the color of the
wires!  A few years ago, I watched a friend miss connect some jumper cables;
fortunately nobody was seriously hurt (I did burn my hand a little tearing
the cables off) but I imagine it could have been a major disaster.  Upon
questioning my friend as to why he did such a dumb thing, he protested that
he hooked the red to the red and the black to the black; and sure enough, he
almost had.

	Turns out that one car was brand new, and had a black insulated
positive lead, and a bare copper ground strap.  Since new, clean, copper has
a reddish look, it's not to hard to see how he confused the two.  A horrible
example of human interface design, if you ask me!
--
Roy Smith, Public Health Research Institute
455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016
roy@alanine.phri.nyu.edu -OR- {att,cmcl2,rutgers,hombre}!phri!roy
"Arcane?  Did you say arcane?  It wouldn't be Unix if it wasn't arcane!"