THE WAR OF THE CURRENTS

Jack Coffey
Astolfi HTY 305

TABLE OF CONTENTS
I: INTRODUCTION 2
II: THE WIZARD OF MENLO PARK 3
III: THE CHILD OF LIGHT 9
IV: WESTINGHOUSE 14
V: EDISONS FOLLY 15
VI: TESLA RISING 17
VII: CASUALTIES OF WAR 18
VIII: THE EXECUTIONERS CURRENT 21
IX: HARDSHIP AND VICTORY 22
X: NIAGARA FALLS-THE ULTIMATE TEST 26
XI: AFTERMATH 29
WORKS CITED 32

I: INTRODUCTION
In the late nineteenth century, a war broke out whose outcome would shape the lives of
Americans to this day. This was not a war of force, but one of words, ideas, and inventions. The
war of the currents, as the press would dub it, saw iconic inventor Thomas Edison facing off
against the combined might of devious businessman George Westinghouse and the brilliant, if
mentally unstable, Serbian inventor Nikola Tesla. Edison, who at the outbreak of the war was
already famous around the world for improving both the telegraph and telephone and for inventing
the phonograph and the modern incandescent light bulb, was beginning a noble crusade to power
all of New York City based on his direct current system. Tesla, a former employee of Edisons
power company, invented something that Edison never anticipated: an alternating current
generator, which more than doubled the electrical output and efficiency. However, Tesla, while a
brilliant inventor and self-promoter, lacked any true business sense. Enter George Westinghouse,
who would provide the business knowledge needed to fully capitalize on Teslas ingenious
invention. These strong personalities, in many ways celebrities of their time, would clash in a
spectacular publicity war that would grip the nation and redefine the electrical industry, with
Edison, unable to admit his systems inferiority, lashing out against Tesla and Westinghouse. One
of the three men would emerge from the war victorious and prosperous, another would lose the
company he had toiled to build, and the last would sink from international fame into an enduring
state of obscurity. The battle between Edisons direct current system and Teslas alternating
current demonstrates the remarkable power held by these early visionaries in the electrical industry
and the impacts of its conclusion continue to affect Americans to this day.

II: THE WIZARD OF MENLO PARK

To this day, the name Thomas Edison is synonymous with American invention and
ingenuity. To this day, Edison ranks among the worlds most prolific inventors, with a grand total
of one thousand eighty four patent families filed around the world. Born to a lower-middle class
family of Canadian immigrants in 1847, Edison was largely uneducated, having been taught to
read and write by his mother but seldom was he given a proper education. Edison read plenty
during his childhood, having been particularly attracted to works concerning scientific innovations
such as steam engines and chemical reactions. As he entered his early teenage years, it also became
apparent that Edison had inherited an entrepreneurial mindset from his father, who established a
number of businesses and involved himself in a number of industries to support the family with
varied success. Six months after starting work as a newsboy on a train, Edison began to run two
market stands in Port Huron, both of which he would close after a short period of time as the
ongoing Civil War boosted his newspaper sales. After an accident which caused hearing loss,
Edison was forced to abandon his increasingly profitable newspaper job. However, a much more
modern means of communication, the telegraph, began to enrapture Edison. Learning telegraphy
in his spare time, Edisons hearing disability actually may have allowed him to pick up the skill
quickly by filtering out distracting background noise. Earning a position in an Ontario train station
as the night operator, Edison would springboard into a relatively long career within the telegraph
industry. It was during this time that he would create his first true invention: a telegraph practice
machine that would record a Morse code message and transmit it to another machine more slowly.
Relocating to Cincinnati in 1867, Edison became increasingly involved with the
technology behind telegraphs. He began to self-educate himself on mechanical design through
simple experimentation with telegraph apparatus. Eventually he developed a system which could

send completely undecipherable telegraphs, which he attempted to sell to the US government with
little success, and his own duplex telegraph line, which was a recently developed system that
allowed for two messages to be transmitted on the same line simultaneously. Edison soon moved
to Boston, which was the heart of the telegraphing community in the United States. The vast
intellectual community and numerous shops and businesses devoted to the telegraph here further
stimulated Edisons tinkering he soon began work on a number of different inventions involving
this technology simultaneously which he would attempt to sell with mixed success. His duplex
line design would lead him to another opportunity when a company based in New York City
requested a demonstration of it in 1869. While this offer brought Edison fame, as the line
successfully transmitted a message from Manhattan to Rochester (an unheard of distance), it
proved unfruitful from a business standpoint. Indeed, Edisons duplex line received little attention
elsewhere and he soon abandoned the project. However, Edison noted that New York possessed
numerous business opportunities not present in Boston and made the decision to remain there, a
choice which would open the gateway to his future success. Edison would go into business with
Franklin Pope, a friend and mentor, and James Ashley, the editor of the Telegrapher, a newspaper
for telegraph enthusiasts, to form Pope, Edison, & Company, an early technological consulting
firm. Edison and Pope together would invent a printing telegraph (a telegraph machine that could
encode and send pictures) that would rather inadvertently lead to a major contract with gold-value
reporting firm Gold and Stock (which would eventually be purchased by Western Union). The
value that Gold and Stock placed on Edisons inventions and mechanical expertise proved to be
extremely lucrative and eventually allowed Edison to open two experimental workshops and
manufactories in Newark to further study and research printing telegraphs and gave him impressive
clout locally as an inventor and electrician. Edison certainly possessed a talent and passion for

entrepreneurship, and as Randall Stross remarks in the opening of The Wizard of Menlo Park,
Having ones own shop, working on projects of ones own choosing, making enough money
today so one could do the same tomorrow: These were the modest goals of Thomas Edison when
he struck out on his own as full-time inventor and manufacturer. The grand goal was nothing other
than enjoying the autonomy of entrepreneur and forestalling a return to the servitude of employee
(Stross 13). On the other hand, Edison was just as passionate, if not more so, with inventing. He
would spend long hours tinkering at his workshop, often not returning home until early into the
morning. When his first wife, Mary Stilwell, expressed disinterest in and a lack of understanding
concerning his inventions, Edison would write about his disappointment in his journal; on
Valentines Day, 1872, Edisons journal entry read My wife Popsy Wopsy cant invent (Israel
75). In 1875, Edison moved almost all of his business operations to Menlo Park, a town which had
been born out of the failed venture of a land developer and at the time consisted of about thirty
large homes spread out on large lots, connected by dirt roads no town hall, school, or church,
one saloon (Stross 20), where he was free to construct a new laboratory to fully suit his needs.
That same year, Alexander Graham Bell, during one of his own experiments with telegrams,
discovered the means to capture and transmit the human voice. Edison had been close to
discovering this himself when, one year later, Bell would introduce the world to the telephone.
Edison immediately gravitated towards this new device, creating a carbon-based audio transmitter
that produced results far clearer than Bells original apparatus. This allowed Edison to begin
manufacturing telephones of his own in addition to the telegraphs he had become renowned for.
Originally a direct competitor to Bell, Edison soon found an entirely new market in the form of
music; Edison created what at the time was termed a musical telephone, as it was built
specifically to reproduce music. Bell had invented his own version of this device, but Edisons

version produced results both clearer and louder. Despite a plethora of setbacks, the concert debut
of Edisons musical telephone received a standing ovation as it played music performed five miles
away loud and clear enough for the entire auditorium to hear and enjoy.
This early phonograph would, ironically, not pique Edisons interest much. He viewed it,
as much of the technological community at the time did, as a fad. While it certainly was a
significant scientific achievement, it was hardly practical to have a live band perform in a distant
location so that the sound could be transmitted not into a home but a theater. Thus, its profitability
lay solely on the factor of whether or not people would continue to pay for this novelty. Thus,
Edison barely devoted any of his time to further developing the musical telephone, instead
continuing to explore new means of sending telegrams and further tinkering with the telephone.
However, this position would change when one evening in 1877, Edison realized that the
vibrations created by the diaphragm of a telephone combined with a needle had the potential to
record sound on wax paper. He and team of lab assistants instantly began jury rigging a test
prototype, and while the results were far from clear Edisons hypothesis proved to be correct.
However, he and his assistants wholly underappreciated this breakthrough; for two years, Edison
continued to work on improvements to his telephone and only rarely returned to his recording
prototype. In 1877, he finally allowed his publicity agent, Edward Johnson, to write a letter to the
editor of the Scientific American detailing the discovery, primarily because he was short on funds
and hoped that it could at least generate short-term income similar to the music telephone. Stross
best summarized the reaction to the announcement of this invention:
The editors of Scientific American were so excited so emotionally moved, they confessed
in an introduction, by the immediate prospect of being able to listen to the voices of the
dead that they jumped ahead to a list of possible applications of this new capability.
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Spoken messages might replace written letters. The words of historys greatest orators
could be enjoyed in perpetuity. And music may be crystallized as well. The
publicationset off a frenzy in America and Europe (Stross 34).
Edison immediately began working the device into a more sellable package, developing a
foil cylinder that replaced the wax paper used previously. The invention of the phonograph almost
instantaneously launched him into international fame as one of the worlds foremost inventors.
Reporters flocked to Menlo Park to interview the man who had invented the phonograph.
Important figures from around the nation, ranging from scholars to politicians to newspaper
editors, requested demonstrations. President Rutherford B. Hayes even brought Edison to the
White House for a private demonstration, with Edison remaining in Washington for the entirety of
the following day to showcase the amazing phonograph to congressmen and the First Lady.
However, Edison became consumed and distracted by his fame and found himself unable to
complete a full commercially available product until a decade later. Instead, Edison turned his
attention to a new exploit: electric lights.
To this day, Edisons supposed invention of the light bulb is regarded as one of the defining
moments of American history. Indeed, the name Edison remains practically synonymous with light
bulbs to those with even a cursory knowledge of history. While the significance of this event is
certainly noteworthy, in reality Edisons accomplishment is less than it is usually portrayed. Forms
of electric lighting had been present in Europe for over seventy years prior to Edisons
experiments, with the first recorded demonstration of such occurring in 1808. Indeed, a precursor
to the modern electric light known as an Arc Light was regularly used in lighthouses and fixed to
very tall lamp posts in cities. While they worked efficiently, they were too bright for common use,
being compared to miniature suns. Additionally, the arc lights required constant maintenance to
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ensure they continued to shine at a constant frequency. The other type of lighting available at the
time was the incandescent bulb, which was much softer on the eyes but suffered from a serious
design flaw: the bulb relied on a filament to create its light, and the various materials to make the
filament during various experiments either burned up within minutes or melted before they could
reach the heat needed to generate light. However, on a trip to Connecticut at the bequest of a friend,
Edison witnessed a demonstration in which a series of arc lights were kept ablaze by an
electromagnetic generator. Realizing the potential for indoor lighting and captivated by the
display, Edison immediately began full experiments to attempt to develop an efficient incandescent
light. Already did he begin to envision light centers, massive generators which could provide
lighting for entire city blocks. So consumed by these dreams of grandeur was he that Edison
immediately began preaching to the press his simple solution to the incandescent bulb problem,
promised a working product within days, and began founding his own electrical company. Weeks
later, Edison can be found outright lying to the press and to investors, holding private
demonstrations that were considerably short, and deflecting requests for public demonstrations.
The simple solution he had conceived of previously simply did not work the bulbs would burn
out within five minutes as the platinum filament would begin to melt. Edison would continue to
bury himself deeper and deeper into lies and deception in a race to buy enough time to complete
the bulb before public scrutiny began to override Edisons fame. It was not until November of
1879 that Edison finally developed an efficient filament prototype: carbonized paper bent in a Ushape. By 1881, Edison was already planning to build his first centralized power plant in what is
Manhattans modern Financial District. The first building to be fully powered by Edisons lights
would be the famous Vanderbilt estate, a venture which would end disastrously after just a few
days when a sparking wire caused a small fire within the home, leading the Vanderbilts to request

the systems immediate removal. This would not deter Edison, who proceeded to install an
improved system in the home of J.P. Morgan and install the worlds first incandescent lighting
system around his plant, feats which would only serve to cement his status as a wizard. The
Edison Electric Company constructed a great number of power plants (based on a direct current
generator system Edison had designed), but few of their other products were commissioned. Both
his power plants and incandescent bulbs faced constant opposition from the ruthless gaslight
industry, which touted its product as both cheaper and more efficient. The companys private stock
began to sharply decline alongside its sales, reaching one sixth of its peak value within a few years
of operation. Edisons plants themselves proved to be remarkably inefficient and were prone to
fires. Seemingly from the beginning, Edisons grand vision of cities emblazoned in Edisonmanufactured light began to appear as more of a pipe dream than a realistic goal. Edisons future
friend and contemporary, Henry Ford, would summarize Edisons reputation at this juncture: [he
is] the worlds greatest inventor and the worlds worst businessman (Stross 169). This assessment
is slightly flawed however; Edison was most successful as a true entrepreneur and tended to
flounder when he was required to take orders from and report to stockholders and corporate
executives. It was at this point that the first true challenge to Edisons electrical superiority
emerged in the form of the combined might of a Serbian prodigy and a ruthless investor.

III: THE CHILD OF LIGHT

Our modern technological lifestyle would be far off in the future were it not for the
inventions of Nikola Tesla. In particular, Teslas groundbreaking work into alternating current
power would redefine the entire electrical industry, and modern versions of his alternating current
system and tesla coil are still in use to this day, with the latter being found within a plethora of
technological devices including computers and television sets. However, the man himself and the

importance of his accomplishments are practically unknown to average people, unlike his rival
Edison. In fact, Teslas name began to fade from the public consciousness not too far into his own
lifetime. In the opening of his biography on Tesla, W. Bernard Carlson quotes Laurence A.
Hawkins, who in 1903 wrote, Ten years ago, if [the general public] had been required to name
the electrician of greatest promise, the answer wouldhave been Nikola Tesla. Today his name
provokes at best a regret that so great a promise should have been unfulfilled (Carlson 6). Tesla
was born in 1856 to a Serbian minister in the small town of Smiljan in present day Croatia, then
part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. According to family myth, he had been born at the stroke of
midnight during an intense thunderstorm, causing his mother to remark that he would be a child
of light. Inspired by his mother, who would tinker with household tools to make them more
efficient, Tesla began to experiment at an early age. He possessed an extremely, sometimes
unusually active imagination which he claimed would give him hallucinations and even out-ofbody experiences. As he grew older, he utilized this imagination for more practical means; he
claimed that he would often envision his inventions in his head, part-by-part, and work out most
of the foreseeable problems with the design before constructing it physically. He would attribute
his obsession with electricity to an early observation involving static electricity and the family cat;
on a dry winters morning, he found that stroking the cat produced excessive amounts of static.
Baffled, the young Tesla approached his father, who compared the phenomenon to lightning in the
sky.
Tesla reenrolled at the Joanneum Polytechnic School in Graz, Austria in 1878. Originally
intending to study mathematics and become a professor, he became consumed by the notion of
developing a functioning alternating current power system after an incident involving a classroom
demonstration. In Teslas own words,

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While Professor Poechl was making demonstrations, running the machine was a motor,
the brushes gave trouble, sparking badly, and I observed that it might be possible to
operate a motor without these appliances. But he declared that it could not be done and
did me the honor of delivering a lecture on the subject. At the conclusion he remarked,
Mr. Tesla may accomplish great things, but he will certainly never do this (Tesla 39).
W. Bernard Carlson, in his fantastic biography of Tesla, notes that the professor may have
simply intended to refocus the lecture back on the operations of the motor, or that he truly believed
a motor propelled by natural forces (whereas the one used in the classroom demonstration relied
on a hand crank) to be a scientific impossibility. Regardless, the dismissal ignited a fire in Teslas
mind that he would prove this professor wrong (Carlson 43). Tesla began to use his astonishing
abilities of mental visualization to devise a new motor one which required neither an artificial
force to turn nor sparking communicator brushes which channeled the direct current system. For
years this notion possessed Tesla, and over time his conceptualized motot would embrace a unique
concepts: that the motor would utilize an alternating current system as opposed to direct current
and that the motor would be designed to work with a generator as part of a larger system as opposed
to a standalone machine. (The concept of alternating current power had been developed previously
but was seldom explored. The vast majority of all electrical inventions and explorations at the time
involved direct current.) Tesla was possessed by this idea for years, but found himself unable to
dream up the apparatus needed to make his system work. Per his parents wishes, he transferred to
a university in Prague in 1880 and moved to Budapest the year afterwards to work for Tidavar and
Ferenc Puskas, who were ironically working with none other than Thomas Edison to establish
telephone exchanges in major European cities. Here he had a major breakthrough in his AC system:
that a rotating magnetic field could be used to turn a motor in absence of an outside force. In 1882,

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Tesla was finally hired by Puskas and began his work for Edisons company in Paris, often
tinkering with and even improving upon Edisons phone design in his spare time. He began filing
patents for various designs based upon this concept, although most of these early attempts at
theoretically creating a working motor were jarring combinations of brilliant and terrible ideas,
hailing from Teslas inability to physically assemble and test these devices. When Tesla was
reassigned to begin working on the installation of incandescent lighting systems, he began to tinker
with Edisons power dynamos. A supervisor, impressed with the promise Tesla demonstrated,
arranged for the inventor to be transferred directly to Edisons central New York office. Puskas
would write a letter of introduction for Tesla addressed directly to Thomas Edison, which read I
know two great men and you are one of them; the other is this young man (Carlson 69). Tesla,
while unimpressed with (if not repulsed by) New York, was eager to please. After being placed at
Edison Machine Works, the company which constructed the generators and motors used by
Edisons power plants, Tesla quickly began working on a smaller and more efficient dynamo core
for the generators. Tesla succeeded, but his project was ultimately shelved in favor of the
development of an arc lighting system (The Edison Electric Company sought to develop its own
arc light system to compete with other companies within the field.). Once again, Teslas work went
completely unrewarded, as the company canceled the project when it realized it would be unable
to properly market the system. Dismayed and feeling unappreciated, Tesla quit his job with Edison
after only working there for six months.
It was at this juncture that Tesla truly began to embrace inventing as a career as opposed
to utilizing his talents simply as a pastime or as a means to advance in the workplace. After
witnessing a failed experiment in which Thomas Edison attempted to create a generator which
directly created power from burning coals, Tesla began experimenting with heated magnets to use

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in electrical motors. He invented seven variations of a thermoelectric motor, which utilized a

magnet, a Bunsen burner, and a pendulum to spin the motor indefinitely. This caught the attention
of Alfred Brown, a senior manager at Western Union with a true appreciation for invention, and
Charles Peck, a lawyer with business expertise, who partnered with Tesla in order to fully explore
the business potential of Teslas motor. In 1887, Tesla, Peck, and Brown chartered the Tesla
Electric Company, with Tesla receiving a one third cut of all revenue from his inventions, a $250
monthly salary, and his own laboratory in the heart of Manhattans Financial District. Tesla began
devising a multitude of new machines (or improvements on existing apparatus), including an
upgraded power dynamo and a failed attempt to devise a thermomagnetic generator. However,
Tesla soon began to devote all of his focus towards his AC motor. His research during this time
would finally advance the motor past its previous conceptual stage into a full prototype. Tesla
devised a multi-coil system, allowing multiple alternating currents to operate independently,
finally coming close to perfecting the system that he had been tinkering with and dreaming about
for a decade. He presented a fully functional prototype to Peck and Brown, where he used the
magnet-powered motor to spin a tin can. While somewhat impressed with his design and excited
by the prospect of what was essentially a self-operating motor, they remained unconvinced of the
efficiency and stability of alternating current and attempted to persuade Tesla to switch to the
industry-standard direct current. Tesla responded to these doubts with a demonstration where,
alluding to a popular story involving Christopher Columbus and the Spanish Court, managed to
not-only balance a brass egg upside-down but to also cause it and several metal balls to spin around
the table. Peck and Brown were thoroughly impressed with the display and from this moment
forward offered Tesla their full support in the development of AC. It also communicated to Tesla
the importance of illusion and showmanship when pitching rather unwieldy ideas to investors or

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consumers in order to secure an investment, a skill Tesla would utilize throughout the war of the
currents (Carlson 92). With this, Teslas revolutionary new motor would soon be finalized, leaving
him and his two partners to begin a quest to find someone who would be willing to purchase the
patents.

IV: WESTINGHOUSE
At the time when Thomas Edisons electrical company was stagnating and Nikola Tesla
was perfecting his alternating current motor, George Westinghouse was launching his foray into
the electrical industry. Born in 1846 in Schenectady, New York to the owner of a machine shop,
Westinghouse would make his fortune by devising numerous improvements to Americas budding
railroads . Carlson summarizes George Westinghouse as a unique mix of technical genius and
business acumen, claiming that not only was [he] able to develop air breaks and improved signal
systems for the railroads, he was equally skilled at running the companies needed to manufacture
and market these innovations on a large scale (Carlson 88). These qualities would designate him
as the perfect competitor for Edison, especially since by 1884, he had become intrigued by the
business prospects presented by the early energy industry. Westinghouse originally commissioned
the design of a direct current generator, but after taking note of a suprising rise in experimentation
with alternating current in Europe, he instead bought the rights to a rudimentary AC system
(comparatively speaking when compared to Teslas project). Edison dismissed AC on numerous
occasions as unstable, unreliable, and even dangerous, and the American public in general was
wary of the significantly higher voltage created by an AC generator. However, Edisons DC
designs carried an innate flaw: not only was the wiring required to sustain a direct current more
expensive, but the current itself would begin to fade after a relatively short distance. This relegated
the use of Edisons system to population centers. On the other hand, AC could travel much further

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due to the constant reversal of currents, allowing Westinghouse to sell his systems to smaller, less
dense communities. By 1887, Westinghouse had positioned himself through a number of patent
acquisitions as Edisons single biggest competitor. Additionally, during this time copper prices
began to rise sharply; due to amount of copper Edisons system required, even a one cent price
increase per pound of copper could add thousands of dollars to the already hefty cost of
constructing a power station. Westinghouses AC system required only one third the amount of
copper as Edisons DC system by comparison (Jonnes 148). It was at this stage that Edison, facing
rising copper prices and increasingly successful competition and hindered by the notion that his
system was superior in any conceivable way, first conceived of the notion that his celebrity status
could give him the upper hand.

V: EDISONS FOLLY
Edisons first maneuver against the rising threat of high-voltage alternating current would
be to quietly and secretly [plant] something of a legislative land mine intended to damage his AC
rivals (Jonnes 150). In 1887, Edison received a letter from Dr. Alfred Southwick, one of the
members of the pleasantly titled New York State Death Commission, which was tasked with
finding a more civilized means of executing prisoners with the intention of eventually replacing
the noose. The letters intention was to inquire if Edison, at the time considered to be the foremost
authority on electricity in the entire nation, believed that electrocution would be a more humane
means of killing people. Edison responded initially that he was completely opposed to even the
concept of capital punishment and refused to become involved, but Southwick remained persistent.
One month later, Edison wrote back with a complete reversal on his earlier position, with the
following response:

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[The quickest, most painless death] can be accomplished by the use of electricity,
and the most suitable apparatusis that class of dynamo-electric machine which employs
intermittent currents. The most effective of those are known as alternating machines,
manufactured principally in this country by George Westinghouse The package of the
current from these machines through the human body even by the slightest contacts
produces instantaneous death (Jonnes 149-150).
By summer of next year, New York became the first state in the union to authorize further
exploration into the use of electricity for carrying out electrocutions. The next phase of Edisons
assault would be more direct Edison would publish through his company an eighty-four-pagelong rant, packaged in a pamphlet emblazoned with a bright red cover and the title WARNING!,
about the supposed dangers posed by alternating current technology. Many of Edisons claims
were antiquated at best, entirely invented at worst. These uncharacteristically malicious actions
beg the question of Why? Edison had never cared much about what his competitors were doing
previously, and often simply dismissed them as shallow imitations of his original brilliance.
However, in the past Edison had never been forced to worry about market dominance either. His
fame alone was enough to ensure that his empires supremacy never faltered. However, not only
did Edison truly believe that alternating current was too unstable for safe application, but
Westinghouse, with his superior business acumen, was proving to be the first genuine threat to his
superiority (and with a new and superior product too, rather than a shallow copy of Edisons work).
Thus, WARNING! portrayed Westinghouse and all others who dared to branch into AC power as
peddlers of snake oil, vultures preying on the uneducated by selling them an inefficient, unstable,
and all-around inferior product, supposedly responsible for the deaths of dozens of workers, and
so deadly that it should only be used for executions. Edison encouraged the public to trust only

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direct current power, which was henceforth marketed as the safer, friendlier means of power
generation. The brand image Westinghouse had worked so hard to establish of AC being the next
step in the electrical revolution was severely damaged. He knew that he needed something to utilize
as ammunition in this war. Conveniently, an obscure Serbian inventor had made a remarkable
entry into the electrical community with a series of riveting lectures on his revolutionary AC power
system and induction motor.

VI: TESLA RISING

While Edison proceeded to rabidly attack anything related to AC power, Nikola Tesla stood
blatantly in defiance. Having fully embraced the need for showmanship and theatricality, Tesla
was taking the electrical community by force, determined to make a world powered by his
induction motor and AC system a reality. Teslas pitch was also incredibly unique among his
contemporaries as it added a humanistic touch to the more artificial notions of business practicality
and technical superiority. Tesla was a man not truly concerned with practicality as much as he was
with ideals; Tesla would openly promote his AC system as an advancement in workers rights as
much as it was a scientific achievement, due to its elimination of much of the manual labor required
to operate a motor. This manner of thought can be traced back to his father, the preacher who wrote
many essays concerning workers rights and civil liberties. Years earlier, Tesla had remarked to a
friend No more will men be slaves to hard tasks. My motor will set them free, it will do the work
of the world (Jonnes 163). Even in a scientific sense, Tesla was always trying to push his
inventions to their fullest potential and highest level of efficiency, regardless of how it affected the
cost. Carlson compares Tesla to Steve Jobs in this sense, juxtaposing this habit against Jobs
tendency to frequently [exhort] his engineers not to worry about costs but instead design insanely
great products with new capabilities (Carlson 99). The crown jewel of Teslas publicity tour

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would occur in 1888, when he was invited to speak in front of the American Institute of Electrical
Engineers. The presentation enraptured the minds of the scholars and professionals attending, as
his AC system and induction motor were bafflingly advanced. In particular, the induction motor
itself was simultaneously the first motor designed to work with an AC generator and the first to
require no man-driven force or sparking communicator brushes to run it. Even more impressive
was the hidden fact that this system was the culmination of a decade-long obsession, and that he
design in its entirety was both conceived in and constructed from Teslas mind, with no paper
notes or blueprints utilized. In the following weeks, Teslas laboratory was constantly busy as
fellow inventors, academics, and businessmen were constantly visiting to see a more personal
demonstration Teslas technology. More importantly, however, was that a number of investors
began to mean with Peck and Brown to discuss purchasing the patents. In particular, George
Westinghouse expressed considerable interest in Teslas motor and after a lengthy deliberation
decided that the patents were important enough that they were to be acquired at any price both
to take advantage of the technology in the battle against Edison and also to prevent them from
falling into the hands of any other potential rivals. Thus, later that year Tesla would board a train
to meet with Westinghouse in Pittsburgh, and the two would set out to shatter Edisons claims
against alternating current power. With Teslas genius by his side, Westinghouse could finally
stand on equal footing with Edison and fight back against his smear campaign.

VII: CASUALTIES OF WAR

Over time, Edisons attacks on AC grew increasingly malevolent. The New York Post,
whos chief editor was a long-time investor in Edisons companies, published letters of concern
on the front page from Harold Brown, a relatively unknown journalist, alleging that every day
someone met a horrific end due to the dangers of alternating current, that any company pursuing

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this as a means of supplying power were vicious killers willing to trade human life for increased
revenue, that AC was in every aspect inferior to the safe and essential DC, and calling for a
complete legislative ban on the horrific AC monstrosity, citing constant danger from sudden
death (Jonnes 166). In response to this latest series of attacks and those made previously,
Westinghouse wrote a lengthy personal letter to Edison, entreating for peace between the two
entrepreneurs. In particular, Westinghouse reminded Edison of when he took tours of the Menlo
Park laboratory and, as an olive branch, offered Edison a tour of his headquarters to discuss their
differences. Edison replied with a simple two sentence note, thanking Westinghouse for his
generosity but explaining that he was too busy to accept the offer, and shortly afterwards ordered
his sales associates to begin publically accusing Westinghouse of lying about ACs advantages to
swindle the public. Westinghouse was furious to the point that he briefly considered suing, but
instead decided to finally launch an attack of his own. He wrote another personal letter, this time
to the New York City Board of Electrical Control. After detailing the rapid expansion of his
electrical enterprise, Westinghouse launched into a skillful defense of alternating current, citing
hard numerical and statistical data, while dismissing the war against AC as a method of attack
which has been more unmanly, discreditable, and untruthful than any competition which has ever
come to my knowledge (Jonnes 169). Westinghouse also flooded the Boards headquarters with
workers and common folk who had survived the fatal shock of alternating current with very few
long-term negative consequences. Westinghouses supporters turned their attention to Harold
Brown, demanding that he provide concrete proof of the lethality of alternating current. Little did
they realize that Brown himself was by far the most vicious and sadistic participant in the War of
the Currents. Brown craved fame and viewed the crusade against AC as the key to what he desired.
With Edisons proverbial support, Brown launched a series of horrific, if not downright psychotic,

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public presentations during which he electrocuted domesticated animals to death to prove the
lethality of AC. During his very first demonstration at Columbia College, he proceeded to slowly
weaken a large Labrador Retriever with a gradually increasing exposure to a direct current, with
the voltage beginning at 300 and proceeding up to 1000 volts. The direct current was suddenly cut
off, and as the dog struggled to recover, Brown then suddenly shocked the animal with 330 volts
of alternating current, instantly killing it. This barbaric display based on clearly flawed and onesided science was Browns undeniable proof that alternating current was lethal. The attending
crowd, mostly scientists and physicians, unanimously responded to the display with disgust and
hostility, and several members of the crowd came forward as members of the ASPCA to demand
Brown to never again repeat his twisted work. Brown dismissed these protests as Westinghouses
lackeys attempting to end his noble crusade. He soon arranged for an even more maleficent
demonstration, this time taking place in none other than the heart of Edisons laboratories. Edison
personally attended, bolstering Browns legitimacy in front of the entirely journalistic audience.
Brown electrocuted two calfs and a full-sized horse that evening, using an extremely low voltage
AC current to fell the animals by cutting into the creatures backs and feeding the electricity
directly into the spine. The New York Times the next day proclaimed alternating current to be the
most lethal force on the planet, and medical societies around the state began proclaiming
alternating current to be the most efficient method of executing criminals. In another
demonstration, with Edison again personally in attendance, Brown electrocuted a circus elephant
in a public square. Westinghouse responded with another carefully thought-out letter, and Brown
invited Westinghouse to be his next test subject.

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VIII: THE EXECUTIONERS CURRENT

Brown and Edison soon had exactly what they craved most: a completely unstaged death
proven to have been caused by alternating current. Despite the two mens claims of regular deaths
caused by AC, this individual, a repairman by the name of John Feeks employed by Western
Union, was only the third confirmed case in New York City of death attributed to AC electrocution.
Edison decided that this was his moment to emerge from the shadows and reveal himself as the
puppet master. He took the press by storm, declaring AC to be the executioners current, entitling
Feeks as a martyr, citing Browns murderous demonstrations, and calling for the popular cry
to be heard and answered by a legal nationwide ban of AC (Jonnes. Edison now superseded Brown
as the rallying figure against AC, as he hoped his fame alone would be enough to force
Westinghouse out of the market and restore his dominance over all things electrical. Coining AC
as the executioners current, Edison sought to deal what he thought would be the final blow
against AC: the first criminal execution by means of electrocution in the nation. Through his
machinations, Brown was placed as New York States Official State Electrical Execution Expert
and a target was selected: William Kemmler, currently being tried for murdering his mistress with
an axe. Westinghouses allies managed to oust Brown as Edisons lackey, thus removing him from
the public eye, but this did little to slow Edisons mission. After a long series of appeals ascending
all the way to the Supreme Court (Kemmlers attorney was attempting an acquittal based on cruel
and unusual punishment), Kemmler was ultimately sentenced to death by electrocution. Edison
interviewed with various newspapers, claiming that the alternating current would instantly and
painlessly kill Kemmler and even mummify his body, while his lackeys in the press attempted to
coin the Westinghouse as the nickname for the electric chair, inspired by the namesake of the
Guillotine. The morning of August 6th, 1890 marked Kemmlers execution, at which neither

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Edison nor Brown were present. Kemmler was shocked for seventeen seconds, which Edison,
before the event, would have stated to be an unnecessary length of time for the alternating current
to kill him. The physician declared Kemmler dead, but suddenly the condemned man began to
breathe again. The electrodes were quickly reattached and the current was left on for several
minutes. The sight was so gruesome that many of state-required witnesses left the room from the
sheer dreadfulness of the affair. The reporter sent from associated press fainted. Red foam oozed
from Kemmlers mouth, his clothes caught on fire, and the room filled with a horrific stench. The
autopsy report three hours later stated that the chair had roasted Kemmler as well as a piece of
overdone meat (Jonnes 212). Edison and his supporters declared this as typical for a first attempt
and blamed the prison doctors for misplacing the electrodes, but continued to proclaim the
execution as bold step away from the hangmens noose and towards the true future of alternating
current, advocating that the use of the electric chair be standardized around the world. Harold
Brown disappeared from the public eye, seemingly ashamed of his role in the ordeal. The New
York Times headline the following day proclaimed the electric chair to be far worse than hanging.
Westinghouse remarked simply that they couldve done better with an axe and that blame would
be placed on those responsible. Tesla abhorred the chair, proclaiming it to be an abomination and
stating it was an apparatus monstrously unsuitable for any executions (Jonnes 212-213). It is one
of historys great ironies that Thomas Edison, the man who brought incandescent lighting and
recorded audio to the world, considered to be essentially the patron saint of inventors and
entrepreneurs around the globe, created the electric chair simply to try to snuff out a competitor.

IX: HARDSHIP AND VICTORY

Soon after Edisons supposed victory with the electric chair, a financial crisis struck which
threatened to capsize both Edison and Westinghouses companies at a time when both had

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achieved skyrocketing financial profits. In particular, Westinghouse enjoyed the success that the
electric chair had indirectly brought him; Edisons obsession with associating Westinghouses AC
with death had turned out to have the exact opposite effect, with people connecting the affair to
Edison rather than his rival. The crisis was caused when London-based Baring Brothers &
Company, one of the worlds largest investment firms at the time, announced suddenly that they
were on the brink of bankruptcy. This caused a panic among lenders that would leave
Westinghouse in a serious predicament: while his other various companies were flourishing,
Westinghouse Electric held a very large degree of debt and liabilities which had accumulated both
from the acquisition and development of Teslas AC motor (which still had not been made
commercially available due to the in-house engineers difficulty with adapting it to fit into the
existing power systems, and Westinghouses tendency to purchase smaller businesses outright and
incorporate them into his empire. When the market crashed, it left Westinghouse with a vast
amount of debt to settle in a very short period of time. After his initial attempts to attract new
investors simply to cover costs had failed, Westinghouse journeyed to New York to seek new Wall
Street backers. Additionally, he also journeyed to Teslas laboratory, where he found the now
thirty-one-year-old Serbian tinkering with a wireless, filament-less light bulb. Tesla had grown
quite wealthy from the acquisition of his patents, but now he found himself staring back into the
eyes of his patron with the positions somewhat reversed: it was Westinghouse now who was
entreating Tesla to aid in the cause of keeping Westinghouse Electric running through the forfeit
of future profits. Tesla agreed, citing his gratitude for Westinghouses support over the years
before promptly tearing his contract to shreds and forfeiting any further capital gain on the AC
Motor. Tesla also gave a second lecture at the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, the first
of which was the speech that catapulted him into the national eye and attracted Westinghouses

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attention. This second presentation further cemented Tesla as a genius, as he demonstrated a

number of new technologies, including his wireless lightbulbs which used an airborne electrical
current to cause a bulb in Teslas hand to glow forth. In a somewhat indirect stab at Edison, Tesla
proceeded to perform an experiment that has since become one of his trademarks: he would
proceed to run over ten thousand volts of alternating current electricity through his body, but rather
than this killing Tesla, he remained perfectly unharmed and began to glow as whats been
described as electrical flames radiated from his skin. Teslas second lecture at the AIEE was
described by Electrical World as one of the most brilliant and fascinating lectures that it has ever
been our fortune to attend, while Harpers Weekly claimed that it single-handedly placed Tesla
in the company of such inventors as Edison, Elihu Thompson, and Alexander Graham Bell (Jonnes
232).
Meanwhile, Thomas Edisons company was beginning to fall apart as well. Edison was
financially secure earlier that year despite the panic caused by Baring Brothers collapse as the
Edison Electric Company had enough cash to cover any debt that was immediately payable. Thus,
as Westinghouse scrambled to raise the $500,000 needed to keep his company afloat, Edison
would merge all of his various electrically-focused companies under one roof, the newly formed
Edison General Electric. However, doing this actually resulted in an $85,000 decrease in profit,
forcing Edison to run his lab entirely in the red while he attempted to solve this problem. Edison
believed this to be resolved when he won an extremely lengthy lawsuit concerning light bulb
design in 1892, which was estimated by his legal team to result in an additional two million dollars
per year in royalties alone but did not actually yield anywhere near as much. In the meantime,
Westinghouse had seemingly done the impossible: he had successfully raised the $500,000 through
stock issuances while relinquishing none of his authority over the company. Henry Villard,

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president of Edison General Electric, attempted to persuade Edison to merge with rival company
Thomson-Houston, whos AC power systems would allow Edison General Electric to offer both
AC and DC services, but Edison vehemently refused partially due to his hatred of AC and because
of his disdain for any sort of corporate merger (claiming that a merger would disrupt his motivation
to invent new products). Thus, Villard and his financial adviser Charlie Coffin began plotting
behind Edisons back to merge with Thomson-Houston. The duo sought the aid of J.P. Morgan,
long-time friend and financier of Edison, who initially disapproved of their resolve but soon
reversed his position. The deal was soon struck, with the end result being laughably partial towards
Thomson-Houston Charlie Coffin was named president of the new company, which was to be
renamed to simply General Electric, but Thomson-Houston stockholders would control
significantly more of the company. When Edison found out that his company had been sold off
behind his back, his name stripped from it, and his ownership in it reduced to a minority, he was
understandably disgusted. Claiming that the electrical industry had grown old to him, he sold off
his stock in the company that he had built and washed his hands of the affair. Friends and
contemporaries who would visit him in the coming months reported that he was growing
increasingly bitter, seemingly obsessing over the loss of his company and determined to start a
new venture that could top it. The editor of the Electrical Engineer, the influential W. Commerford
Martin, wrote an editorial citing the attitude taken, and persistently held, by Mr. Edison towards
alternating current distribution as the key factor in his downfall, elaborating that:
Since its introduction for long distance service six years ago, it has practically driven the
direct system from the field of much of the central station business. Mr. Edison set his face
against it as a flint from the first, and has sought on every possible occasion to discredit it

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through the weight in the community of his justly great name. But the tide would not turn
back at his frown (Jonnes 243).
At the 1893 Chicago Worlds Fair, the full extent of Westinghouses victory would be
demonstrated: the entire fair was lit with over 25,000 Westinghouse-brand light bulbs, powered
by a Westinghouse AC generator, and Westinghouses presentation room was the highlight of the
show, filled with mind-boggling AC devices and contraptions designed by Tesla, who presented a
truncated version of his second AIEE speech to resounding affect. However, while Edison had
been defeated there was still one final battle in the War of the Currents left to be waged.

X: NIAGARA FALLS-THE ULTIMATE TEST

In 1886, Thomas Evershed, the chief engineer for the Erie Canal, proposed an ambitious
plan to harness the power of Niagara Falls to generate a wealth of electrical power. After
assembling a team of investors, the plan floundered for several years until 1890, in which the
remaining investors turned to J.P. Morgan for aid. Morgan assigned Edward Dean Adams, an
Edison investor and railroad manager, to revive the project. In July, 1891, the Niagara Committee,
as it would be known, decided to contract out the project and held bidding between six different
companies, including Edison General Electric, Westinghouse Electric, and Thomson-Houston.
The project would call for ten water turbines, each with five thousand horsepower, built into two
separate power junctions with each turbine powering a generator. This venture would, at the time,
be the single largest power station project in the entire history of the energy industry. As such,
Adams had been closely monitoring the war between AC and DC, waiting to see if there would be
a clear winner. Even within the committees own membership, lines were being drawn between
the two sides. Hopeful for a clear answer, the Niagara Committee hired Scottish electrician and
Professor George Forbes, a known proponent of alternating current, as a consultant. Forbes
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dismissed Edison GE and Thomson-Houstons designs, both of which were centered on using
direct current. However, he was extremely hesitant to recommend Westinghouses AC plans as
they still had yet to include Teslas induction motor. The engineers at Westinghouse were all but
rebellious about using it, as several of the technical details required to make it work went against
the established standards of Westinghouses systems. Finally, in 1892, the Tesla system would
have its first true commercial success in the snowy mountains of Colorado, simultaneously proving
its versatility and its efficacy. With this, the last major issue plaguing AC the lack of a working,
commercially tested motor was finally resolved. Westinghouse bid on the Niagara contract, but
soon ran into another obstacle: Teslas motor was too powerful for the specific generators that
would need to be used. Thus, Westinghouse contacted Tesla and brought him to Pittsburgh, where
for the next few months Tesla altered the motors design to make it more compatible with the
particular generators in the plans for Niagara. Still, the Niagara Committee was indecisive, truly
torn between AC and DC. Tesla, who remembered being fascinated with Niagara Falls as a
teenager, decided to become more involved in the project. He heavily petitioned the entire
Committee for Westinghouse to get the contract, citing the disastrous impact a DC system could
have on the final output. The end-result was less than favorable for any party, as Adams, truly torn
between Westinghouse, GE, and the two other European companies competing, decided to lift
some of the best ideas off of each of their four proposals and instead give the design contract to
Professor Forbes. Westinghouse was furious, convinced that he had been taken for a fool.
Additionally, it was discovered that GE was committing corporate espionage against
Westinghouse, paying a high-ranking drafter thousands of dollars to steal plans for various
Westinghouse projects. However, when Forbes announced his design was complete,
Westinghouse sent two of his best engineers to examine the design. They were appalled by the

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hodgepodge Forbes has turned out, with a significantly low frequency of 16.5 cycles per second
(Teslas motor ran at sixty cycles per second) which would cause constant and noticeable flickering
of lights, and a dangerously high voltage of 22,000 volts, which would rend any form of insulation
almost completely useless. Adams sought Westinghouse to build the contraption but Westinghouse
rebutted that the specifications would need to be compromised on simply for safety and efficiency
purposes. Westinghouse won the contract, but continued to butt heads with the arrogant and
conceited Forbes, whose design was blasted by electrical engineers across the country. Forbes, in
retaliation, wrote an extensive article for an English magazine portraying himself as a genius and
the Americans as idiots whose lack of understanding he found to be generally amusing enough,
but tragic at times when I found them endangering the whole work (Jonnes 306). As
Westinghouse Electric was putting the finishing touches on the generators, Teslas fame grew even
greater; magazines were labeling him our foremost electrician and greater even than Edison.
Tesla was now surprisingly an avid socialite, dining at the ritzy New York restaurant Delmonicos
every evening and navigating social circles with ease. Beneath the surface, however, Tesla was
plagued by severe obsessive compulsive disorder, mostly relegated to an obsession with schedules,
routines, and numbers. It had been seven years since Westinghouse first purchased the patents for
Teslas AC system, and now Tesla was being brought out to Niagara to see the entire system in
action for the first time Westinghouse had convinced Adams of the superiority of Teslas system
over Forbes. On July 19, 1896, Tesla, Westinghouse, and Adams entered the power plant, the
largest of its kind in the world at that time, and the first to utilize Teslas AC system. The current
was so strong and so stable that it would be used to bring power to Buffalo, New York in the
coming months. With this resounding victory, the War of the Currents was over. No one would
ever again challenge the efficacy of alternating current, and direct current would fade from use.

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XI: AFTERMATH
George Westinghouses electric empire continued to grow steadily over the next decade,
with each year bringing higher profits and bigger dividends. In particular, Westinghouse would
apply Teslas AC system once again, this time to the New York City subway system. His engineers
would design an entirely new locomotive engine which would run entirely on AC power, which
would be seen as a triumphant culmination of Westinghouses achievements in both the railroad
and electrical industries. However, Westinghouse once again began borrowing significant funds
to afford the rapid expansion of his electrical empire. In a classic example of history repeating
itself, the Westinghouse Electrical Company again found itself in trouble during the infamous
Panic of 1907. This time, however, Westinghouse would be unable to salvage his business like
before Westinghouses Security and Investment Company, Machine Company, and Electrical
and Manufacturing Company all declared bankruptcy. Westinghouse was knocked down, but
always the eternal optimist, seemed relatively unphased and began instantly planning to
reinvigorate the companies. However, the electric companys new president, Robert Mather,
despised Westinghouse, and the feeling was mutual. Mather saw Westinghouse as a profligate who
wasted money on inventors and acquisitions. Westinghouse believed Mather to be the epitome of
greed who cared only for profit and little for progress or the welfare of workers. Mather and the
new board of directors forced Westinghouse out of his beloved electrical company, and while he
would try to recapture it his efforts would be unsuccessful. The loss was a crippling blow to
Westinghouse, one that he never truly recovered from. Seven years later, Westinghouse passed
away a beloved public figure, viewed as an honest man and an incredible entrepreneur in an era
where most corporate owners were loathed by the American public.

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After the loss of his own electrical company, Edison would take the money made from
selling his ownership and open an iron ore-crushing plant in New Jersey, the first in what he
foresaw as a chain of plants which would gradually conquer the entire mining industry in New
England. The venture was a farce, with the plant being shut down almost semi-annually for safety
improvements or for Edison to implement a new machine. The plant never turned a profit and the
workers were consistently discussing the potential of a strike. By 1898, Edison had completely
automated the process, of harvesting and crushing the iron ore, but constant calamities still
required a large human staff to make repairs. He would close the plant forever by the next year,
keeping it open just long enough to satisfy his existing contracts. He would also continue to tinker
with both new concepts and his previous inventions, as was his nature. He also expanded on the
Kinetoscope, the worlds first means of viewing movies which he had invented for the 1893
Worlds Fair. In 1896, Edison debuted his Vitascope, a projector built to compete with other
similar technologies. Edison found new success in the early motion picture industry, and by 1908
he was financially successful once more. His last major invention was an attempt to create a better
storage battery, which he finally achieved in 1909 after tinkering with it intermittently for close to
a decade.
After the opening of the Niagara power plant, Tesla began to pursue his next grand concept:
wireless transmission of electricity and data, which he believed could be achieved with radio
waves. Tesla devised a number of concepts, including rudimentary forms of GPS, cell phones, and
wireless networks, but never proceeded past the concept phase with any of them. By 1897,
however, Teslas grand gesture of renouncing his rights to his royalties for the AC system, for
what he believed as the common good of all, was beginning to haunt him. His experiments into
wireless transmission of data proved to be extremely costly. Still, Teslas reputation alone was

30

enough to secure funding to perfect his next two inventions: remote-control devices and a multichannel broadcasting system, both of which would have been revolutionary at the time. However,
Teslas knack for showmanship overreached at this stage, as he decided to demonstrate these two
creations by combining them into a remote controlled boat. At the presentation, none of Teslas
charisma could get anyone to see a practical use in what they viewed as simply an advanced toy.
Dissuaded by the lack of investor interest, Tesla returned to his investigations into electricity.
However, Tesla was a pure inventor at this stage. He had lost interest in making anything practical
and marketable, and had become obsessed with his grand cause of advancing the human race.
Realizing he could no longer restrict his laboratory to a single floor in a skyscraper, Tesla followed
a friend to Colorado Springs, where he was offered free land to build a full laboratory and free
electricity. However, Teslas showmanship once again damaged him more than it did aid him.
Looking to secure more capital for his experiments, he returned to New York only to be disparaged
by the electrical community; Tesla had made many grand promises in the past for products that
would reshape the electrical industry, yet had actually delivered on few of them. This cycle would
continue for many years, with Tesla never able to secure any further backing for any of his projects.
He passed away on January 7th, 1943 at the age of eighty three, almost completely penniless.
Teslas legacy lies in his original creation, the AC system, and his famous Tesla Coil. To this day,
advanced variations of Teslas system remain the industry standard in many respects. For the most
part, however, Tesla, for all his amazing feats of electrical prowess and world-changing AC
system, is a forgotten genius today.

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Works Cited
Carlson, W. Bernard. Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2013. Print.
Israel, Paul. Edison: A Life of Invention. New York: John Wiley, 1998. Print.
Jonnes, Jill. Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World.
New York: Random House, 2003. Print.
Stross, Randall E. The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern
World. New York: Crown, 2007. Print.
Tesla, Nikola. My Inventions: The Autobiography of Nikola Tesla. N.p.: Merchant, 2013. Print.

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