The War of the Currents
You’ve probably heard about the famous rivalry between Nikola Tesla and
Thomas Edison—both giants of electrical engineering whose innovations changed
history. But what exactly was their history with one another?
That whole boss/employee thing. Tesla, a Serbian by parentage, began working
for the phone company in Budapest. In 1882, he headed for Paris, where he took a
job with the Continental Edison Company. He was invited to work stateside after
his supervisor wrote a recommendation praising the young man as a genius on par
with Edison himself. While he hired Tesla, Edison thought the man's ideas were
“splendid” but “utterly impractical.”
Clash of the methods. Edison relied heavily on tedious experimentation for most
of his discoveries, a commitment which some historians attribute partially to his
lack of formal education. Tesla, in contrast, was an emotionally driven dreamer
with years of engineering training, which allowed him to work out theories before
physically implementing them. Later in life, each man publicly criticized the
other’s work.
Clash of the lifestyles. Tesla was a germaphobe, extremely clean to the point of
(allegedly) using seventeen clean towels a day, and claiming to have a “violent
aversion against the earrings of women.” He once told the New York Times that
Edison "had no hobby, cared for no amusement of any kind and lived in utter
disregard of the most elementary rules of hygiene."
Clash of the...similarities? Edison and Tesla were alike in some equally
irreconcilable ways. Both were very proud men who abhorred pride in others. And
both men required little sleep, which would have made for many long, grumpy
hours in the workshop.
War of Currents! Edison’s least favorite of Tesla’s “impractical” ideas was the
concept of using alternating current (AC) technology to bring electricity to the
people. Edison insisted that his own direct current (DC) system was superior, in
that it maintained a lower voltage from power station to consumer, and was,
therefore, safer. But AC technology, which allows the flow of energy to
periodically change direction, is more practical for transmitting massive quantities
of energy, as is required by a large city, or hub of industry, say. At the time, DC
technology only allowed for a power grid with a one-mile radius from the power
source. The conflict between the two methods and their masters came to be known
as the War of Currents, forever immortalized by the band AC/DC.
The Bet. Tesla insisted that he could increase the efficiency of Edison’s
prototypical dynamos, and eventually wore down Edison enough to let him try.
Edison, Tesla later claimed, even promised him $50,000 if he succeeded. Tesla
worked around the clock for several months and made a great deal of progress.
When he demanded his reward, Edison claimed the offer was a joke, saying,
“When you become a full-fledged American, you will appreciate an American
joke.” Edison offered a $10/week raise, instead. Ever prideful, Tesla quit, and
spent the next few months picking up odd jobs across New York City. Nikola
Tesla: ditch digger.
The rift. Tesla eventually raised enough money to found the Tesla Electric Light
Company, where he developed several successful patents including AC generators,
wires, transformers, lights, and a 100 horsepower AC motor. Always more of a
visionary than a businessman, Tesla ended up selling most of his patents (for the
healthy but finite sum of $1 million) to George Westinghouse, an inventor,
entrepreneur, and engineer who had himself been feuding with Edison for years. In
fact, Westinghouse was a more economic participant in the War of Currents than
was Tesla. Their partnership, one can imagine, made the eventual popularizing of
AC that much more bitter for Edison.
Safety Concerns. In the spring of 1888, a media furor arose over a series of deaths
caused by pole-mounted high-voltage AC lines in New York City and around the
country, attributed to the greed and callousness of the local AC-based lighting
companies. In June of that year a New York electrical engineer named Harold P.
Brown came to prominence as an opponent of the use of alternating current,
claiming the AC-based lighting companies were putting the public at risk using
high-voltages and installing them carelessly. Brown's campaign immediately
gained the assistance of Edison and his company, aiding Brown in his public
electrocution of animals with AC, trying to claim that AC was more dangerous
than DC.
The "Electric Wire Panic". 1889 saw another round of deaths attributed to
alternating current. Then, on October 11, 1889 John Feeks, a Western Union
lineman, was high up in the tangle of overhead electrical wires working on what
were supposed to be low-voltage telegraph lines in a busy Manhattan district. As
the lunchtime crowd below looked on he grabbed a nearby line that, unknown to
him, had been shorted many blocks away with a high-voltage AC line. Feeks was
killed almost instantly, while a horrified crowd of thousands gathered below.
Feeks' public death sparked a new round of people fearing the electric lines over
their heads in what has been called the "Electric Wire Panic". The blame seemed to
settle on Westinghouse since, having bought many of the lighting companies
involved, people assumed Feeks' death was the fault of a Westinghouse subsidiary.
Writing Prompt: You work for the Niagara Falls Power Company and you have been
asked to find technology to harness Niagara Falls to generate electricity. Your boss has
heard about the feud between Westinghouse and Edison and wants to know your opinion
on who should be hired for the contract. In the chart below, write out pros and cons of
AC and DC power, and then write a memo to your boss letting him know which company
to choose and why. Be sure to mention the “pros” of your choice and mention at least
one “con” and why it does not change your choice.
Pros
Cons
AC Power and
Westinghouse
DC Power and Edison
“Victory” in the War. Eventually, after a few company mergers and Edison
leaving his company, in the end, AC won out. Mostly. In May 1892 Westinghouse
Electric managed to underbid General Electric on the contract to electrify the
World Exposition in Chicago and, although they made no profit, their
demonstration of a safe and effective highly flexible universal alternating current
system powering all of the disparate electrical systems at the Exposition led to
them winning the bid at the end of that year to build an AC power station at
Niagara Falls to power New York City, and built upon its principles the same
system of local power grids we use today.
Looking back. Despite losing the “war”, Edison’s original point about the
practicality of DC is well-taken. The average person can’t have alternating currents
flooding massive amounts of energy into their household appliances, so most plugin devices must internally convert AC back to DC (that’s what’s going on inside
the brick of your laptop cord). That conversion wastes a lot of energy (think of all
the heat coming from the brick of your laptop cord). Major studies are beginning to
examine ways in which AC and DC power can work together with modern energyharnessing technology, to run our overall grid more efficiently.
Tesla on Edison: "If he had a needle to find in a haystack he would not stop to
reason where it was most likely to be, but would proceed at once, with the feverish
diligence of a bee, to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his
search. ... I was almost a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory
and calculation would have saved him ninety per cent of his labor."
—New York Times, October 19, 1931 (the day after Edison died)
Article pieced together from MentalFloss.com and Wikipedia