Nikola Tesla was a Serbian-American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer. He was born in 1856, in what is now Croatia, and died on January 7, 1943, in New York City. Tesla is best known for his groundbreaking work in electricity and magnetism, and his inventions and ideas shaped many aspects of modern technology. He held over three hundred patents. Though he didn’t achieve great financial success during his lifetime, he is now considered one of the greatest inventors.
Thomas Edison was born in 1847, Ohio. At age 12, Edison convinced his parents to sell newspapers to passengers along the Grand Trunk Railroad. He began publishing his own small newspaper named the Grand Trunk Herald. He also used his access to the railroad to conduct experiments in a small laboratory in a train baggage car. A notable event was when Edison saved a 3 year old boy from being run over by a train, the child’s father rewarded him by teaching him to operate a telegraph. In 1869 Edison moved to New York City and developed his first invention. In 1870, he set up his first laboratory and manufacturing in New Jersey. He was granted a patent for his own improved light bulb in 1879. He began to manufacture it. In January 1880, Edison set out to develop a company that would deliver the electricity to power and light the cities of the world.
What is “War of the Currents?”
Starting in the late 1880s, Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla were embroiled in a battle now known as the War of the Currents. In 1882 Tesla came up with the idea for a brushless AC motor which is Tesla’s best known invention. After that year he moved to Paris and got a job repairing Direct Current (DC) power plants with the Continental Edison Company. And that’s how the War of the Current starts. Because Nikola was the supporter of Alternating Current and Edison was supporter of the Direct Current which he developed. Direct Current is a current that runs in just one direction. Tesla thought Alternating Current is better because Direct Current was hard to convert higher or lower voltages while Alternating Current runs in several currents and also can be converted to higher and lower voltages.
Edison didn’t like the idea of Alternating Current better than Direct Current. So he started to run a campaign to raise the Direct Current against the other one by saying that Alternating Current is more dangerous. Animals were electrocuted with Alternating Current by Edison to make people believe Alternating Current is dangerous and it was the fastest way to die.
Tesla couldn’t get the payment he needed from Edison’s company and so he quit his job. He sold his patents to the Westinghouse Electric Company in 1888 and Westinghouse even had Tesla’s own lab. This company became Edison’s Company’s rival immediately. But in the end Edison failed with its smear campaign to AC. Westinghouse and Tesla supplied electricity to the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. They also received a contract to construct the AC generators for a hydroelectric power plant at Niagara Falls which was the unofficial ending for the War of the Currents.
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Sources:
https://www.biography.com/inventors/thomas-edison
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Nikola-Tesla
https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/nikola-tesla
https://www.energy.gov/articles/war-currents-ac-vs-dc-power
https://www.history.com/news/what-was-the-war-of-the-currents
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