|
The Great Electrical Tape Failure
by Ray Strackbein
I needed some electrical tape.
I have used hundreds of rolls of electrical tape. But I didn't remember seeing any around the house recently. Surely, I had a roll somewhere. I looked through all of my old junk boxes, certain I would find a roll, and I did. I remember that roll. I last used that brand over 20 years ago. It was a familiar old friend. It aged; it lost its sticky. It popped right off the connection I was trying to insulate.
I found yet another way to explain the Y2K problem.
Suppose all electrical tape lost its sticky not after 20 years, but on January 1, 2000.
Anything using electrical tape would no longer be insulated. Machinery would stop. Cars would stop. Electrical fires would start everywhere.
Electrical tape is used on electrical connections in buildings, appliances, cars, trucks, and industry. It insulates connections and to hold them in place, protecting them from moisture, shorts, and
from causing electrical fires. It is also used when repairing wiring often even when other better products are available. I have seen electrical tape used to repair garden and radiator
hoses. Electrical tape might be found in almost any device that uses electricity.
Some of the effects of the Great Electrical Tape Failure would not be immediate.
As the tape lost its sticky, it would begin to unwrap. In some cases if something else was pressing against the tape, it might not unwrap at all. However, if the tape were subject to constant bending and vibration, the tape would unwrap almost immediately.
We would need to find and replace all electrical tape with a newer technology immediately.
Where is the electrical tape in your house or car? Could you find it, or would you need to call an electrician? Anything -- businesses, buildings, automobiles, and trucks -- would need electricians at the same time. Perhaps your handy neighbor could help. Perhaps you can just wait until January 1, 2000 to see what happens. Probably, nothing will happen. It is probably just a conspiracy by the electricians and electrical tape manufacturers to get more business. When you think about it, the 3M company wouldn't let this happen. They will probably produce a spray anyone can use to restore the adhesiveness to the tape.
What products and services would you need that might rely on electrical tape? Perhaps in the Year 2000, stoplights would malfunction. Certainly our electricity and phone service would be at
risk. Does your bank or grocery store have electrical tape anywhere? How about the trains, trucks, and ships that have embedded electrical tape? Will we be able to get any goods and
services?
But there are those who scoff.
It couldn't be that big a problem -- we can always just go back to doing things the way we used to before electrical tape. Our grandparents did fine without electrical tape.
But as I started to investigate the problem further, I found an even stickier problem.
Failures would not be confined to just electrical tape. All tape will lose its adhesion by January 1, 2000. Carpet tape, masking tape, adhesive tape, even duct tape.
That, in a nutshell, is another way to explain the Year 2000 computer problem.
The problem began as one kind of problem -- mainframe computers -- and evolved into a whole class of problems: all computers. Like electrical tape, computers are everywhere.
Sometimes, to find either computers or electrical tape, we have to take things apart.
We have to take the covers off of the washing machines, traffic signal boxes, and the pumping systems that move our petroleum cross-country. It takes a lot of time and experts to uncover and fix the problems.
And, as the experts turn their attention to finding no-longer-sticky electrical tape, they also find other types of no-longer-sticky tape, carpet tape, masking tape, adhesive tape, Band-Aids, even duct
tape…
Y2K is a sticky problem.
www.y2kkitchen.com Copyright © Raly Strackbein ray@y2kkitchen.com
Get more! Buy Y2K Kitchen - The Book (703)262-0300 voice/fax
Y2K Kitchen, 12030 Sunrise Valley Dr., #300, Reston, VA 20191
|
