The War of Currents

21st century – the era of machines. Stepping into this era, we have started becoming more and more technology dependent. Technology has been adding new milestones to this generation. If we talk about a television or any other giant machine, all these are somehow changing our lives. But behind all these, one thing that is making everything work is “Electricity”. Do we know about the lifetime contribution of scientists to avail this electricity without which our life seems to be incomplete today?

Let us know about the electricity war between two great scientists that brought up a revolution in the field of electricity and pioneered a new era.

1879 – After thousands of failed attempts, when Thomas Alva Edison lit up a bulb, it was no less than an amazement. After this successful attempt, Edison not only taught the application of electricity but also was able to replace the kerosene lamp with a cheaper alternative. But he had a great challenge of taking this bulb to every home because that required taking electricity to every home.

Edison was also a very good businessman. So, he also founded the Pearl Street Station to take electricity to each home, which was the world's first power station. DC current was generated from Edison’s power station. So, this also had certain limitations. One of the biggest limitations was the generated DC power couldn’t be transmitted to a distance greater than half a mile. So, it made a compulsion for power stations to be built only in those areas where population density was high.

While Edison was busy in availing his electricity to the people of America, a young boy in a college of Austria was stressed about how a DC motor could be replaced with a device so that it could have greater power and farther distribution. He was Nikola Tesla. After college, Tesla started working in Edison’s factory outside Paris. In the process, he found out some limitations in Edison’s DC generators for which he designed a new motor. He started alternate channelling of the generated current instead of direct channelling. This brought an increase in both power and range of electricity. Overwhelmed by this joy, Tesla thought of disclosing this good news to Edison in America by himself.

In 1884, when he reached Edison’s lab, he found that prior to informing this to Edison, he needed to impress him. He finally found a chance to prove himself when he had to repair a damaged DC motor on a ship and he successfully did it which left a positive impact on Edison. Finding an opportunity, Tesla proposed his idea of AC current but opposite to his expectation, Edison became infuriated and called it baseless and extremely dangerous; the reason behind saying so was probably his investment in his power stations which would seem pointless in case AC power systems were realised. It was hard for him to digest that such a junior lad was probably more genius than him.

Following this incident, Tesla left working in Edison’s lab and started meeting investors for funding on his AC motors. Time passed by and Edison started facing difficulties in meeting power supply demands due to the limitations of DC power stations. Due to increasing power supply demands, businessmen started seeing electricity as a business opportunity and Tesla got funding for his motor. In 1887 Tesla established his Tesla Electricity Company.

Till date, due to Edison’s monopoly in the market, people had to agree to his terms. So, Edison was having two different rates for current coming to households and current to factories. Tesla challenged the monopoly with his AC current which was available at a price 1/3rd of that of Edison’s DC current. Furthermore, there was a uniform rate of current irrespective of the place it was being delivered to.

Until this, electricity was only being used for light bulbs. After Tesla made a few improvements to his motor, electricity could be used to light bulbs as well as run machinery. This step proved to become a milestone for his company but appeared as a problem to Edison. After this advantage of AC, in July, 1887, Tesla got George Westinghouse as his big investor and he started making money while Edison’s company started losing its grip in the market.

Now this became a sort of cold war between the two and Edison wanted to prove DC was better than AC, which was not possible due to the many advantages of AC over DC. As a result, he began telling people about AC being dangerous. He started using electricity on animals and showed this to the media. However, this got neglected due to various other merits of electricity.

Edison was again favoured by the time and in 1890 he was assigned to make a new punishing mechanism for criminal offenders by New York State. In the rage of revenge, he proposed electricity as a way to punish. In the same year, 1000 V of electricity was supplied to a criminal as a punishment in an electric chair which was the first ever human death by electricity.

This resulted in heavy criticism of Tesla; he had to do something soon to prove the capability and power of AC for which he got a chance in the form of the Niagara Falls Company. Niagara Falls, where 2,25,000 cubic feet water falls every second and which generates power equivalent to 10,00,000 tons of coal burning in a year. Tesla grabbed the tender for power production by this company.

Edison was later thrown away by directors of his own company for opposing AC current. Tesla invested a huge amount of money earned from patents in availing electricity to general people so that he could fulfil his dream about AC current. This made him really broke and he spent the last days of his life in a hotel in New York.

It is said that Tesla always got used for someone else’s benefit; be it getting a patent for the works he did or earning money out of what he achieved that too with no credits given. While on the other side, Edison named about 2300 patents in his name and earned heavily.

Whatever happened between these two, this current war made electricity available to countries worldwide which lit up the path to progress of mankind and also fostered it.