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Regarding 1908, one major concern of engineers was the mass of copper
required in the transmission lines. There were various schemes for
arranging "mains" and "feeders" to minimize the cost of the copper, as well
as the voltage drop from one end of the system to the other. Longer
distances required thicker lines to keep the ohmic heating manageable, and
copper wasn't cheap even then. With AC, one can use smaller wires because
there's a thermal duty cycle. I'll have to go back & look at the book,
since AC vs. DC was a raging controversy at the time it was written. Mass
of copper in the transmission lines is *still* a major concern of
engineers...it's a non-trivial economic matter.