The War of the currents:Edison vs Tesla

8:45 PM History , Science 0 Comments

               

                This article is about the war of currents held in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, and stars two of the most celebrated modern inventors, who influenced the course of history, Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison, and has another player, a businessman by the name of George Westinghouse.

                 Nicola Tesla was an American Serbian inventor, born in 1856 in modern day Croatia. His early years were very turbulent, with him contracting life-threatening diseases, escaping his home, fleeing from his family, and excelling in his studies in engineering to being addicted to gambling the next year. He is known for his contributions to the development of A/C current generators, and wardenclyffe tower, and his lesser known inventions include, the torpedo (which the United States government did not show any interest in at the time). He is greatly respected by the 21^st century populace, the revolutionary car company Tesla is named after him, as is the unit of magnetic flux.

                Thomas Edison, who was the founder of General electric, the inventor of the phonograph, and known around the world as the man who invented the lightbulb, although the last fact is false (Mr. Alessandro Volta, after whom the unit volt was named, demonstrated the use of a light-bulb before Edison was even born, in the year 1800). Thomas Edison has practically demonstrated the use of many inventions like the camera and lightbulb. He was a prolific inventor, and had over 1000 patents to his name, due to which his is also known as the man who invented a thousand things.

                Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison had a few similarities, while growing up, as both were inspired and taught by their mothers, with Nikola tesla crediting his mother for his eidetic memory and Thomas Edison saying “My mother was the making of me. She was so true, so sure of me; and I felt I had something to live for, someone I must not disappoint."

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                Another similarity between the two of them is their tough childhood. They both had life threatening illnesses when they were young, Edison was even hard of hearing because of the scarlet fever he had while he was young.

               These two, would, in the future, be on different sides of a war, a war of currents. Nikola Tesla once worked for Mr. Thomas Edison .There was an argument between Mr. Edison and Nikola Tesla over pay. Thomas Edison told Nikola Tesla that if he improved Edison’s design of the DC motor, he would pay Tesla 50000$, and Tesla did exactly that within a month, to which, Edison, saying that he was only joking, replied, "Tesla, you don't understand our American humor”. Instead, Edison offered a US$10 a week raise over Tesla's US$18 per week salary; Tesla refused the offer and immediately resigned.

                This event was the preamble to the war of currents, which brought these two head-to-head. After quitting his job, Tesla focused on A/C generators and motors, and soon got patents for them. Edison was a firm believer in D/C power and focused on it, opening the power plants across the United States starting 1882. D/C power, at that time had many disadvantages when compared to A/C current, it was tough to change the voltage (which meant that the lines for industrial use having a high voltage, would have to be different to the domestic usage lines), that the range was very less, about 1.5 km (which meant that the generating station be near the load), and that large conductors would be needed for the stations (which meant a high investment, which was not economical). 

                A young businessman by the name of George Westinghouse, saw the potential in A/C and decided to invest in Tesla, even though it was expensive. (Tesla charged 2.5$ per HP, and 50000$ signing charges for his patents of A/C generators and motors).

               Edison is widely known for his campaigns against A/C power. This marked the all-time low of the ‘war of currents’. Edison, wanting to spread the message that A/C power was more dangerous, tried to discourage the public from using A/C current by spreading rumours about A/C current, killing stray animals, like cats and dogs, and unwanted cattle using A/C current, publicly. In addition to this, he tried to popularize the term ‘Westinghoused’ to anybody who was electrocuted.

               The lowest point in this campaign was reached when Edison paid an inventor by the name of Harold to create an electric chair, and he supplied the first electric chair to the state of New York, for the execution of a prisoner known as William kemmler. The technicians misjudged the amount of current required, and, as a result, the prisoner did not die, but was badly burnt. When asked to comment, Mr Westinghouse said that “they should have used an axe”

               The mighty D/C backers faced their first loss in 1890.The ‘fall’ of D/C started when the Willamette Falls Electric company installed Experimental A/C generators in the Willamette falls in 1890, after the D/C generator, installed the year before, was destroyed due to a flood. In the same year, the Niagara falls power company analyzed methods to harness the power of the Niagara falls. The team analyzed a variety of proposals, but could not come to a decision.

               Everything changed in the battleground in the war of currents a year later. In the year 1891, the international Electro-Technical Exhibition was held in Frankfurt, Germany, and was powered by 3 phase A/C current, being generated 175 km away. This exhibition proved that the A/C system was a more practical and efficient system than the D/C transmission system, and as a result, in the year 1893, the Niagara falls power company gave the Westinghouse corporation the contract.

              This virtually lent a death-blow to D/C transmission. A few years later, General electric also jumped in the A/C bandwagon and caught up to the other companies.

              This rivalry was one that shaped the world, and involved two of the greatest inventors of their time go against each other. Their approach to their ends and their behaviour to it was very different. One of the main differences between them was their upbringing, both having a similar childhood, but the countries that they belonged to were very different. Edison was brought up in America, the land of the capitalists, wherein the science behind the invention was not the main concern, but the practical application and monetary gains were. 

              This fact is evident when we see that Tesla was concerned with the inefficiency with dc systems, whereas Edison was concerned with dc systems being of similar cost to traditional gas lamps. Some speculate that Mr Edison was not even fully aware of ohms law, and on the other end of the spectrum, we have Tesla, who was not an inventor, but a visionary.

                Many analysts of the current war say that both the inventors had amazing ideas, some ideas which were not so good (impossible in the case of Tesla, as in the case of worldwide transmission by Tesla), but the way in which they handled it was very different. Edison tried to force the public to forgo the more advantageous ac current by a media campaign of fear, a staple for politicians, and the way Tesla regarded the problem of his failure ( in his case, the failure of wardenclyffe tower) was similar to that of philosopher Aristotle and many other geniuses and savants, he became eccentric and wasted away.

             In conclusion, we can observe what happens when the yin and yang of a technical entrepreneur collide; the result is innovation, for the better. If left unchecked, the world would have suffered. It would be a costly process to convert to America to dc systems years later, if not for Tesla, and, without Edison, most of the practical inventions he patented would not make it to the drawing board until years later.

              It might seem that Edison was dead wrong, but he might have had the last laugh (if he were alive), because, most modern systems now use a High Voltage D/C current system to transmit power.