The
War of the Currents
- Tesla Meets Edison
- When Tesla first immigrated to the United States
he was thrilled to meet the famed and well known
Thomas Edison. He had a dream that he and Edison
could use a new and up and coming technology to
light the world more efficiently. That technology
was alternating current. However from the beginning
the two did not get along. Edison was a large
proponent of direct current because he had been so
successful with it already and was too stubborn to
accept new innovations. His thoughts were that
alternating current was extremely dangerous and was
a complete waist of time. The first job that Tesla
accepted from Edison was to improve the dynamos on a
boat known as the Oregon under the
impression that if he was successful, Edison would
pay him $50,000. Upon completing the project Edison
refused to pay Tesla and would not even raise his
salary of $18 a week. In response Tesla left,
sparking the beginning of what is known today as the
War of the Currents.
- Westinghouse
- Once on his own, Tesla did not favor well in the
beginning. Many cheated him out of his money on
large projects or did not give him a chance at all.
He struggled to find investors to fund his research,
until on day in 1888 he met George Westinghouse.
Westinghouse was a large competitor of Edison and
other companies, specifically in public transit.
Upon seeing Tesla's ideas of a more efficient
alternating motor, he bought several of Tesla's
patents and agreed to pay royalties for every
horsepower produced by his motors. Even with the
help of this new found investor many challenges
awaited. Upon moving to Westinghouse's company,
other engineers had difficulty working with Tesla
because he was terrible at making design plans and
never made blue prints.
- Edison, enraged by the new competition, launched a
massive campaign to try and gain the public's
support against alternating current. A young
engineer that worked for Edison, Harold Brown, would
frequently hold demonstrations in New York where he
would use alternating current to electrocute animals
in public to show the dangers of alternating
current. In 1890, with the use of alternating
current the first man was killed by electric chair
in Auburn, NY. The public was shocked by how
dangerous AC could be.
- Winning the War
- In 1893 Westinghouse
underbid all the competition trying to gain
the contract for lighting the Chicago
World's Fair. Westinghouse won and Tesla was
able to use his newly fielded AC generators
and motors to light the entire World's
Columbian Exposition.
- The final blow came with
the Nigra Falls power plant project. In 1896
Tesla aided in the design and installation
of five 85 ton electric turbines that would
run electricity to Buffalo, NY, over 26
miles away. Tesla and Westinghouse had won
the War of the Currents.
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