It quickly became apparent that the future of the
industrial revolution would either depend on Edison's DC or Tesla's AC
technology. This spawned the "War of the Currents" between Edison and
Tesla. Westinghouse
recalls some of Edison's propaganda against AC,
"I remember
Tom [Edison] telling them that direct current was like a river flowing
peacefully to the sea, while alternating current was like a torrent
rushing
violently over a precipice. Imagine that! Why they
even had a professor named
Harold Brown who went around talking to audiences... and electrocuting
dogs and
old horses right on stage, to show how dangerous alternating current
was."[01]
"...a
murderer
was
about
to
be
executed
in
the first electric chair
at New York's Auburn State Prison. Professor Brown had succeeded in
illegally
purchasing a used Westinghouse generator in order to
demonstrate once and for
all the extreme danger of alternating current. The guinea pig was
William
Kemmler, a convicted ax-murderer, who died horribly on August 6, 1890,
in
"an awful spectacle, far
worse than hanging." The technique was later
dubbed "Westinghousing."[01]
Despite
the
bad
press,
Tesla
and
Westinghouse's
luck
skyrocketed when they won the bid for lighting the
Chicago
World's Fair. The cost of the AC powered equipment was nearly half of
DC's,
mainly because DC
required a much larger amount of copper wire. This
contributed to the fact that AC was more efficient and cost effective
than DC.
After the fair, almost 80 percent of the all the United State's
electrical devices
were
ordered for alternating current.
Chicago World's Fair, 1893
Nikola Tesla,
circa 1886
Edison's DC
Generator
Tesla's AC Generator
**Images from**
DC generator image from http://www.staff.fcps.net/rroyster/war.html
and
All other images from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla
[01] PBS:
Tesla -
http://www.pbs.org/tesla/ll/index.html [02]
Wikipedia: Nikola Tesla -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla
