If everyone uses AC, why do different parts of the world use different standards, like Europe and the United States? For example, in the Americas and Japan a volt system is standard, but Europe and most of the world uses twice that voltage, volts. Nikola Tesla did careful calculations to come up with the 60 Hz number as the best frequency. To make matters even stranger, the lower voltage systems run at 60 Hertz, or 60 oscillations per second, while the rest of the world runs at 50 Hz. At that time, AEG had a virtual monopoly and their standard spread to the rest of the continent.
In Britain, differing frequencies proliferated, and only after World War II the cycle standard was established. The voltage standard was originally v in Europe as well. Working with a certain copper wire diameter, Europe thought it necessary to increase voltage for fewer losses and less voltage drop. The United States wanted to do the same, but when this was being considered in the 50s and 60s, many American households had appliances like washing machines and refrigerators and the cost of replacing them was prohibitive.
Most European households did not yet have those appliances, and it was an easier switch. Staying at this lower voltage actually caused problems in the U. The solution was to run volts to each building, and then split it into two V lines. During the early years of electricity, direct current shorthanded as DC was the standard in the U. Tesla believed that alternating current or AC was the solution to this problem. Alternating current reverses direction a certain number of times per second -- 60 in the U.
Edison, not wanting to lose the royalties he was earning from his direct current patents, began a campaign to discredit alternating current. He spread misinformation saying that alternating current was more dangerous, even going so far as to publicly electrocute stray animals using alternating current to prove his point.
Although some doubted that the falls could power all of Buffalo, New York, Tesla was convinced it could power not only Buffalo, but also the entire Eastern United States.
Edison's enduring legacy isn't a specific patent or technology, but his invention factories, which divided the innovation process into small tasks that were carried out by legions of workers, DeGraaf said. For instance, Edison got the idea for a moving picture camera, or kinetoscope from a talk by photographer Edward Muybridge, but then left most of the experimentation and prototyping to his assistant William Dickson and others.
By having multiple patents and inventions developing in parallel, Edison, in turn, ensured that his assistants had a stable financial situation to continue running experiments and fleshing out more designs. Tesla's inventions are the backbone of modern power and communication systems, but he faded into obscurity later in the 20th century, when most of his inventions were lost to history. And despite his many patents and innovations, Tesla. Related: Beyond Tesla: History's most overlooked scientists.
At the height of his career, Tesla was charismatic, urbane and witty. He spoke several languages and counted writers Mark Twain and Rudyard Kipling, and naturalist John Muir as friends, according to Seifer.
But Tesla could also be haughty and was known to be a hygiene freak. In his later years, his obsessive tics such as his fear of women's earrings grew stronger, and he died penniless and alone in a hotel in New York City, Seifer said. Edison also had a mean streak, which he amply displayed in his vicious attacks against Tesla during the War of Currents. He also gave advice on how to build the first electric chair using direct current DC , going into gory detail about the techniques needed to do the deed, Seifer said.
In the late 19th century, three brilliant inventors, Thomas Edison , Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse , battled over which electricity system—direct current DC or alternating current AC —would become standard.
He opened his first power plant, in New York City, in Two years later, Tesla, a young engineer from Croatia , immigrated to America and went to work for Edison. Tesla quit his job in and a few years later received a number of patents for his AC technology. In , he sold his patents to industrialist George Westinghouse, whose Westinghouse Electric Company had quickly become an Edison competitor.
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