A Productive Rivalry

There is no doubt about it – during the later years of the 19th Century, Thomas Edison was “Mr. Electric” in this country, and the electricity he promoted was direct current (DC). Last month, we took a look at the shortcomings of his DC system versus the alternating current (AC) distribution system that now serves us all so well. Now let’s take a look at the personalities involved.

In 1876, using monies gained from his invention of the stock ticker, Edison established the world’s first industrial-research laboratory in Menlo Park, N.J. Edison referred to this establishment as his “invention factory” and announced that he would produce a minor invention every ten days – and a “big trick” every six months.

He soon had as many as 40 projects going simultaneously, mostly relating to things electric, and was submitting patent applications for as many as 400 items per year. (His final total is impressive: 1,093 patents issued in his name, a record that still stands.)

THE BIGGEST TRICK

After witnessing several demonstrations of arc lights in late 1878, Edison announced that he would invent a safer, less-troublesome source of light that would replace the gas and coal-oil lamps then providing light to the world’s homes, shops and factories.

After a 14-month period during which he experimented with more than 600 different configurations, Edison introduced the carbon-filament light bulb – powered by a high-voltage DC dynamo of his own design.

It was just what the world wanted, and within three years Edison’s company was building a power station in downtown New York and running wires to several hundred customers. All of this was with DC electricity.

A new name enters the story in 1884: Nikola Tesla arrived in New York from his native Croatia with four cents in his pocket and a letter of introduction to Edison. Edison gave Tesla a job, but it wasn’t to last long.

It is difficult to imagine people with as little in common as these two. Tesla, for instance, was schooled as an engineer at several of Europe’s finer universities and was fluent in five languages, while Edison had only three months of formal schooling and three years of home teaching from his mother.

Given his training, Tesla approached technical problems by applying theory and mathematical concepts, while Edison used the brute-force approach of experimentation in hopes of finding an answer. Tesla was a fastidious dresser and meticulous in his personal habits, whereas Edison was a tobacco chewing, spit-on-the-floor slob, seldom bathing and often sleeping in his clothes because he believed that changing them caused insomnia.

Their greatest difference, however, was simply that Edison was a dedicated DC man, whereas Tesla believed that AC was the way of the future.

Both men had very strong views in this respect. Tesla had worked out most of the details for AC generation and distribution and the design of AC motors. Edison knew little of AC and, not understanding the more complex theories involved, dismissed it as “work of the devil.”

ON HIS OWN

Tesla soon realized that he wasn’t going to get a lot of encouragement from Edison on the development of his AC concepts, so he began the preparation of patent submittals for a complete AC system on his own.

In 1887, Tesla filed for seven patents covering AC motors, generators, transformers, transmission lines and lighting. The ideas expressed in the patent applications were so original that the 40 claims were granted without challenge. In fact, it has been said that this group of patents was more valuable than any other since the invention of the telephone.

The following year, George Westinghouse, the inventor of the railroad air-brake and several other railroad-related devices, purchased Tesla’s patents for $60,000 and hired Tesla to assist him in mating these new ideas with some AC generating techniques Westinghouse had been dabbling with for some time. When their AC system was ready for market, the battle was on – and the fun began.

Edison and the AC crowd, with such heavy hitters as Cornelius Vanderbilt and J.P. Morgan providing financial backing, started a campaign to discredit DC. Their tactics were mind-boggling: For example, they hired a Professor Harold Brown to hold symposiums wherein he electrocuted stray dogs and old horses to show the dangers of AC electricity.

Even more startling, when the state of New York decided to use electricity to execute an ax murderer at Auburn State Prison, the DC group contrived to have a Westinghouse AC generator used for the purpose and made sure that the distressing details of the drawn-out death were published in all of the major newspapers. Next, they campaigned to bring a new word into the language: They wanted people to say “Westinghoused” instead of “electrocuted,” as in, “When are they going to Westinghouse another criminal?” A sick, greedy game.

The end wasn’t long in coming. The prestigious Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, also known as the Columbian Exposition, wanted to be the first major event in the world totally illuminated with electric lighting.

By this time, Edison had lost control of his company. J.P. Morgan had taken it over and combined it with several other small firms to create the General Electric Company. GE bid to electrify the Fair with DC power for a million dollars. Westinghouse proposed to do it with AC for about half that amount – and won the bid.

THE TURNING POINT

As it turns out, the difference in cost was primarily a result of the additional amount of copper wire required by the DC system. The DC system had one set of wires for lighting and a separate set for motors because they operated at different voltages. By contrast, the AC system operated everything at a common voltage from just one set of wires.

On opening night, President Grover Cleveland flicked a switch and 100,000 incandescent bulbs glowed brightly while dozens of electrically operated fountain pumps shot water into the air. Twelve Westinghouse AC generators feeding a 40-circuit distribution panel accomplished all of this. Amazingly, only one operator was required.

The final blow to DC came in 1896, when Westinghouse was awarded the contract for the development of the hydroelectric system at Niagara Falls, N.Y. This project called for installation of several 5,000-horsepower, Tesla-designed, Westinghouse-built AC generators. By 1900, more than 80% of the orders for electrical devices in the country were for AC products.

DC had lost the war, but not without some lingering successes. In fact, several cities in the world were initially powered by DC. My hometown of Detroit, for one, had a large block of DC-powered buildings in its downtown area as late as 1957, when I worked there for a recording-equipment company.

I dreaded service calls to any of the DC-powered buildings: The DC-to-AC converters available at the time were clunk-and-bang devices that used a loudly- humming vibrator to chop the DC current into bits and pieces that provided a poor imitation of 60-hertz AC current. (Equipment designed to operate from a high-quality sinusoidal waveform from an incoming AC power source just didn’t do as well on converted DC.)

By the early 1960s, it was all over for DC. A major blow came from the rapid growth of television: Early television sets were not AC/DC devices – they needed a clean, stable AC power source from which to operate, and the war Edison and Tesla had started more than 70 years earlier was now truly over.

Everyone knows about Edison’s contributions and tend to overlook his blindness in advocating an impractical system of power supply, but Tesla has never been given due credit for his far-reaching accomplishments. He continued to pursue electrical phenomena until his death in New York in 1943.

He was no slouch in the patent department, either, with over 600 to his personal credit. We are all in his debt.

Jim McNicol was a technical consultant to the swimming pool, jetted bath and spa industries. He worked on development of equipment standards for pools and spas throughout his career and was honored for his service by the National Spa & Pool Institute.