AC vs DC: TESLA vs EDISON

HOW THE WAR OF CURRENTS BETWEEN NIKOLA TESLA AND THOMAS EDISON TRANSFORMED ELECTRICITY

One of the greatest business and technology battles of the nineteenth century was in the field of electricity, and each opposing side was led by Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla, two visionaries who pioneered Direct Current (DC) and Alternating Current (AC), respectively, in what came to be known as the War of the Currents.

Background

Nikola Tesla was a brilliant Serbian who, after working as an engineer in Hungary and France, moved to the United States to work for a man who would become his biggest rival, Thomas Edison, at his company, the Edison Machine Works.

Edison, at the time, was already a well-established inventor who had just perfected and patented the light bulb. At the time, electricity was becoming a popular energy source, and demand was growing as industries and cities needed reliable power.

Thomas Edison pioneered and advocated for Direct Current, which was more expensive and inefficient due to energy loss in the form of heat dissipation, while Nikola Tesla, on the other hand, advocated for Alternating Current and was able to prove the limitations and drawbacks of DC.

These two visionary inventors, each with their own unique visions and approaches, engaged in a fierce rivalry that transformed the electricity landscape.

Electricity and current

Electric current is a flow of electrons flowing from a positive to a negative pole, and these electrons flow differently in direct and alternating current scenarios.

• Alternating Current

AC flows cyclically and fluctuates in magnitude and direction at regular intervals.

Alternating current is the most preferred power form for long-distance transmission because less energy would be lost compared to Direct Current. Additionally, it’s also easy to transform it into Direct Current when needed.

• Direct Current

DC flows in one direction only, unlike AC, and does not vary in time. Apart from being able to be stored in batteries, other advantages of Direct Current are that it requires less insulation, can be used at lower voltages, and is deemed to be safer than Alternating Current.

In short, while Direct Current is safer, Alternating Current is more efficient for long-distance transmission and transformation.

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Nikola Tesla’s invention meant that electricity generated in power plants could be increased to high voltages, transmitted efficiently over great distances, and then easily stepped down via transformers for use at the destination.

The battle of minds and intellect eventually took a business turn when Edison allied himself with a powerful banker named J. P. Morgan as he sought to electrify the country with DC, an alliance that led to the birth of General Electric.

Nikola Tesla, on the other hand, partnered with George Westinghouse Jr., an entrepreneur and inventor, and went on to create the Tesla Electric Company.

Tesla’s electric company started winning more contracts as the advantages of AC power over DC were apparent, and Edison knew that his system was inferior to Tesla’s but that admittance would mean losing a lot of money.

But a series of fatal high-profile accidents involving engineers and operators working on Tesla’s high-voltage AC gave Edison a lifeline, and he used every opportunity to discredit Tesla’s invention. He even conducted gory and unethical public stunts like stunning and electrocuting animals in public, just to prove how dangerous AC can be and why it shouldn’t be used by people or in homes.

To make it worse for Tesla, the electric chair was invented, and condemned prisoners were executed using Alternating Current. While Tesla seemed to have lost the propaganda war, especially due to Edison’s influence within the industry and his spirited campaign against DC, Alternating Current was eventually widely adopted over the years as the most efficient system to electrify the country.

Edison, who was more business-minded than Nicola Tesla, later applied for a patent license to use AC in their electrification projects, implying that he had accepted Tesla’s AC as a superior system, and eventually transformed General Electric into a great company, while the science-minded Tesla, who had earlier sold his patent to Westinghouse, was consigned to oblivion, where he continued his ground-breaking inventions such as the Tesla coil and wireless communication.

While Tesla’s inventions were ground-breaking and ahead of their time, his inability to make his inventions practical for real-world use and apparent lack of business acumen ended in him dying a penniless recluse.

Thomas Edison, on the other hand, was a pragmatic thinker who was focused on refining existing technologies to make them more practical or commercially viable. Thanks to a dozen other patents, like the phonograph and light bulb, he ended up being a famous and admired inventor and millionaire.