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The toys in Cleve Backster's lab, on the other hand, were powered by batteries and utilized direct current. I also noted that Backster had told me that alternating current was very strong, and tended to occlude the more refined, and weaker PK interactions with his plants and substances. The basic theory was this. In considering an experimental PK design, if the equipment is run by electric power, then the electricity itself must be considered a full part of the experiment. The electricity element was not usually considered an important part in most PK experiments -- because the experimenters thought that the "target" was some mechanism within the equipment that would be sensitive to PK impulses from the subject. Backster thought that the human trying to influence the target must in some way actually interact not only with the target, but with the whole system involved. The smaller and more separated this system is from all other electrical energies, the better the experiment, and the easier to make PK "appear." A direct current system can be set up with a battery, and which isolates all of the equipment and experiment from all other electrical sources -- and so the whole system is quite small and contained. In the case of equipment being plugged into a wall socket, the whole system must actually be very extensive, and ultimately include the gigantic generators which are producing the electric power. The "system" would also include the enormous electric grids that distribute the power to many users, and smaller grids which download the alternating current into SRI, and into the magnetometers sitting on the table.