David J. Wechsler - Electro-Horticulture: The Secret to Faster Growth, Larger Yields & More... Using Electricity!

I would like to give credit and attribution to all of the researchers, and illustrators as individually noted throughout this book.

Regarding the cover art, I would like to give attribution as follows:

• Design: David Wechsler
• Photo Credits:
• High Yielding Cotton Seedlings / Bishnu Sarangi from Dharwad, India / CC0
• Cucumber / Stephen Ausmus, USDA ARS / Public Domain
• Tomato / Sharon Mollerus from Duluth, USA / CC BY-SA
• Strawberries / Sharon Mollerus from Duluth, USA / CC BY

This book came into being as a result of my curiosity about non-mainstream uses of electricity.

Ever since I was a child, I have been interested in truly alternative forms of science, from the inventions of Nikola Tesla and other high-voltage experimenters to UFOs and science fiction. I loved finding catalogs and books covering esoteric, arcane subjects as well as those that were more normal, but homey. For example, on the esoteric-science side I loved Omni Magazine, and on the science/homey side, I absolutely loved the Whole Earth Catalog .

Fast forward to college where I studied electrical engineering and came across a collection of old articles from historical publications ranging from The Scientific American to Popular Science to much older publications that have been out of date for at least a hundred years. In lock-step with my interests in the fantastic and the esoteric, I have also always felt an affinity toward the inventions of the late 1800s. I was completely fascinated by the simple and useful things that were once written about, but were no longer being used. Perhaps they were just experiments that never became popularized, or maybe they became mainstream for a while, only to be crushed out of existence by industrialists of the age.

In time, I found myself most interested in novel, yet simple forms of technology. For example, I have developed a strong interest in Appropriate Technology, described by Wikipedia , as follows:

Appropriate technology is an ideological movement (and its manifestations) originally articulated as intermediate technology by the economist Dr. Ernst Friedrich Fritz Schumacher in his influential work, Small is Beautiful. Though the nuances of appropriate technology vary between fields and applications, it is generally recognized as encompassing technological choice and application that is small scale, labor intensive, energy efficient, environmentally sound and locally controlled.

Very simple ideas can be used worldwide to help people with food production, sanitation, energy, food storage and more. Well-known examples of appropriate technology include:

• Bike-, hand-, and other self-powered forms of pumps
• Self-contained solar-powered lamps and street lights
• Passive solar building designs

All of these interests came together for me when I discovered the topic of electrifying plants. When I was in high school, my father helped me put together a Van De Graaff Generator and I was always experimenting with it. In some old articles describing high-voltage electrostatics, I came across some materials about using electricity for growing plants. This field of study had a name: Electroculture.