Well, perhaps, but both interfere with the proper operation of the Human heart causing it to stop beating. Edison tried to show that DC was "safe" by electrocuting an Elephant with AC, but work after his time disproved that theory. Conveniently for Edison he never tried to electrocute an elephant with DC voltage, would have been a true comparison AC/DC.

And, historically the reason that "electric chairs" used AC is (in part) because Thomas Edison wanted to "discredit" his main competitors Westinghouse/Tesla by getting a Government Authority to use AC voltage in an "Electric Chair" so the common folks would perceive "AC Electricity" as "Far more Dangerous" than DC electricity for marketing purposes. Seems it worked in your case.

Edison (though an intermediary) got New York State to build an "AC" electric chair in the Auburn NY prison (the prison is still in use in 2021, not the chair), where it was used to "fry" a death row inmate quite a while back; https://www.history.com/this-day-in-his ... tric-chair. Edison was quietly behind the passage of this law.

Edison was quite smart, but apparently he had no qualms about "frying" an elephant or a "convict" with AC electricity if it was a useful marketing gimmick for him.

One of the problems with high DC voltages is that the constant polarity in one direction starts to quickly cause electrolysis (the reverse of metal plating) of the human cells which causes lots of damage.

And any thought that a human muscle can respond quickly enough to the change in polarity from a 60 Hz AC electric field and "let go" and disconnect is simply not true. A 60 Hz AC voltage changes polarity every 16 thousands of a second, far quicker than a human muscle can respond. Lots of people have been electrocuted from 60 Hz AC electricity and very few of them had a chance to "let go" in those 16 milliseconds.

I regard any voltage above 40 or 50 volts (AC or DC) as potentially harmful/fatal and take steps ahead of time to avoid contact. There is a safety rating used in industry; "SELV" = Safe Extra Low Voltage, which indicates when it is safe to handle things with power applied (although still not a good practice).

And, there is at least one recorded case of someone electrocuting themselves with a 9 VDC battery, During a "basics of electricity" training course a US Army soldier decided to measure his "resistance" with a DVM that was powered only by a 9 VDC battery. Normally the resistance function of a DVM applies a voltage that might reach a hundred volts or so. If you put the meter tips on your bare skin a very low current will flow and the meter will interpret that as a resistance of a few thousand Ohms.

This student decided to "jab" the sharp tips of the meter probes into his skin. This caused the probes to contact the blood under the skin which is rich with salts and is a very good conductor of lectricty. Would have resulted in a nasty shock if he had put the probes into the same finger. But he decided to measure from a finger on his left hand to a finger on his right hand (with the heart right in the middle). Dead from electrocution caused by the circuitry inside a DVM and only a 9 Volt DC Battery.

Watch yourselves, nobody can see electrons and they can sneak up on you

The controls out of that Burro had a C/H drum switch, which I suppose was used to drop the load off the magnet.

As for dropping the load, I was under the (mistaken?) impression that somehow they introduced AC current into the circuit which would cause the magnetic field to immediately collapse. Where they would get AC out of a 230vdc generator, I have no idea, lol! But, that's what I thought.

The drum switch operated the actual control box, usually arranged so that pulling it toward the operator is on, away is drop and straight up is off. the off position allows the material to trickle off slowly so that you can sort through it.