the abbreviated reign of “neon” leon spinks

OOPS 14
To appreciate the full glory of Edison’s goof, it helps to understand
the times and the extraordinary stakes for which the nation’s most prolifi c
inventor was gambling. In the late 1880s, the world was at a crossroads.
Electricity had been discovered and harnessed, and clearly had the potential
to change the world, but the era’s leading technologists hadn’t yet fi gured
out the best way to generate and distribute it on a large scale.
It also helps to understand the two different types of electricity.
Any electrical device requires the movement—a “current”—of electrons
for power. At the time Edison created the first commercially practical incandescent
lightbulb in 1879, all of the electricity used in the United States
was direct current, or DC. With direct current, electrons fl ow constantly
along a wire like water through a hose, with users siphoning off power
along the way. That type of low-voltage electricity is reliable and safe, but
not very efficient because it requires a generating station every half mile
or so to refill the “hose.” Edison, holder of a record 1,093 U.S. patents,
was a DC man because he had invested heavily to develop systems and
equipment that relied on direct current, and he intended to make a lot of
money electrifying the world with his DC-powered inventions.
There was just one problem: Edison was wrong. An eccentric Eastern
European immigrant named Nikola Tesla, along with visionary Pittsburgh
industrialist George Westing house and others, was pursuing a
different course, developing motors and related systems that ran on alternating
current. AC electricity keeps electrons moving (and producing
power) by quickly cycling them back and forth along a wire between positive
and negative charges. It can be distributed at much higher voltages,
making it more powerful and efficient than direct current, and it’s far
easier to deliver across large geographic areas. Also, if properly handled,
AC electricity is perfectly safe. Although the Edison Electric Light Company’s
1887 annual report dismissed rival AC as “having no merit [and]
notoriously destructive of life and property,” it didn’t take long for most
reasonable people, including some of Edison’s own engineers, to realize
that the future belonged to AC.