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I was recently talking to an electrician friend who did work at the CIA building in Langley Virginia 15-20 years ago. Apparently, back then at least, the CIA had a huge flywheel in the basement of the building that was kept spinning so that if there was ever a power outage, the kinetic energy in the wheel was used to power some sort of generator that would keep the power going to critical electrical systems without any delay at all. Most generator systems kick in after a split second or so, and the CIA couldn't deal with a delay that long. This guy said that you could feel the hum of the flywheel even when you weren't on the same floor.
This friend hadn't seen the flywheel himself, it had just been described to him by someone there.
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