In 1884, a tall, dark-haired engineer named Nikola Tesla left his home in Europe and stepped aboard a ship to sail to America. He was twenty-seven years old and ready for adventure. He couldn’t wait to begin his career with the famous Thomas Alva Edison—a man he had heard so much about. When he arrived at Edison’s New York office, he handed Edison a letter that had been written by a mutual friend. The letter said:
I know two great men, and you are one of them; the other is this young man.
Impressed, Edison immediately put Tesla to work. At this time, Edison’s new lighting system still had some problems — the lights worked perfectly inside, but they were not very good at lighting up the streets outside. He asked Tesla to work on finding a solution to his outdoor lighting problems. After hours of hard work, Tesla presented Edison with his solution. But Edison’s company never used the system Tesla worked so hard to produce. Tesla was outraged and quit the company in disgust. He was so angry that he scribbled his frustration in his notebook that day. The entry read: “Goodbye to the Edison Machine Works!” He had only worked with Edison and his company for a short six months.
Now that Tesla was working for himself, he could begin concentrating on his own inventions. Before coming to America, he had visions of a machine that could power the world. While he was still in school, he had dreamt of creating a motor that could generate an electric current more powerfully and efficiently than anything else that existed. This motor used a source of electricity called “Alternating Current,” or “AC”. After quitting Edison’s company, Tesla spent the next four years creating a new Alternating Current machine.
By the age of 32, Tesla had
invented new machines,
motors and devices that could
move electricity from one
place to another using the
alternating current. At this
time, everyone had been using
the Direct Current electrical
system, which we call “DC”
for short. DC was created by Edison and his company. People used it to power the lights in their homes and the lamps on the streets. However, Edison’s electrical system was very expensive.
The wires for DC were large and used a lot of copper, which cost a lot. DC also needed a lot of those large wires and even larger power stations to transfer the electricity to people’s homes and businesses. Cities began to look like tangled spider webs of thick wires and cords! Not only was Tesla’s AC system cheaper than Edison’s DC system, it also allowed electricity to travel greater distances. A fewer number of the big, costly power stations were needed as a result. Tesla’s AC system was definitely the more efficient of the two for sending electrical currents long distances.
Like most inventors, Tesla needed to raise money to fund his experiments. To
do this, Tesla put on demonstrations to show people his inventions. Audiences sat in disbelief as they watched the inventor light up a simple glass tube with only a touch of his hand. To them, it looked like magic! The businessman George Westinghouse was impressed by Tesla’s creations and approached the inventor to ask about working for his company.
Edison and his company began to worry. What if people began to use this AC system instead of DC? Edison’s company could lose a lot of money. How were they going to convince people to stop using AC? The opportunity soon arose when a blizzard hit New York in 1888.
During that blizzard, several electrical wires were broken by the harsh winds of the storm. The broken, high-voltage alternating current lines were very dangerous. A couple people accidentally touched the broken wires and were badly hurt. Edison had been very worried about the safety of Tesla’s AC system, and these recent accidents confirmed his fears. But Edison wasn’t the only one concerned. A man named Harold P. Brown was also upset about the recent accidents. Brown was an electrician who had once sold electric pens to Edison. Brown accused companies of using the deadly AC because it saved money even though it was costing
lives. To show just how dangerous it was, Brown carried out a number of risky experiments using AC.
People soon began to get suspicious, and they began to wonder. Did Edison have anything to do with Harold P. Brown’s demonstrations? Brown continued to say that he was not working for Edison, but in August 1889, a newspaper published letters stolen out of Brown’s office. The letters showed that he had been paid by Edison’s company. Edison and Brown had lied. They had been working together the whole time in a grand scheme to ruin the reputation of the AC current and Nikola Tesla.
Because of all the bad press, Westinghouse decided that it was time to prove once and for all that AC was better than DC. The perfect opportunity arose during the Chicago World’s Fair.
The Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 was a spectacular event. It drew crowds of over twenty-seven million people to the city of Chicago. They came to see the newest inventions, food, art and music from all over the world. For the main event, the fair organizers wanted to put on a dazzling display of electricity. Their idea was ambitious — to make the fair a “City of Light” at night by placing thousands of luminous light bulbs all over the fair’s buildings. Edison and his company offered to take on the project, but Westinghouse told the organizers that he and Tesla could light up the fair for far less money. The organizers could not turn down such an attractive offer. In a final attempt to stop them, Edison prohibited Westinghouse from using his company’s light bulbs. Westinghouse’s company scrambled to make their own light bulb and succeeded.
On opening day, United States President Grover Cleveland pressed a button, and electricity surged through the entire fair. All at once, 200,000 lamps began to glow, all powered by Tesla’s Alternating Current.
In one of the fair’s buildings, the Great Hall of Electricity, Tesla stepped onto a stage. He was determined to prove that AC was not dangerous if used correctly. Spectators watched in horror as the master showman sent a 250,000 volt shock through his body. But to their amazement, he was unharmed. People left the hall astounded. The audience thought that Nikola Tesla was an electrical wizard.
Tesla’s success at the Chicago World’s Fair was enough to prove the power of AC, but the scientist had one more trick up his sleeve. As a child, he had dreamt of using the power of Niagara Falls for his inventions. Finally, in 1896, he got his chance.
Niagara Falls is located on the border of Ontario, Canada and New York state in the U.S. It is made up of three waterfalls and has a vertical drop of over 167 feet. That’s about as tall as the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, or nine giraffes standing on top of one another!
In the 1890s, there was a plan to build a new hydroelectric power station at Niagara Falls. This power station would harness the energy of the falls to create electricity for the factories nearby. In 1896, Tesla’s childhood dream came true. The new hydroelectric power station at Niagara Falls used AC to transmit power across a distance of twenty-five miles to factories in Buffalo, New York. From that day on, electric companies would use AC to bring electricity from power stations into our homes, offices, stores and factories.
Even though there was no clear winner in the great War of the Currents, it was the creativity and passion of Tesla and Edison’s competition which helped to decide how we use electricity today. Today we use both AC and DC, just in different ways.
Years later, when Tesla was giving a talk about one of his new inventions, Edison appeared in the audience. After Tesla saw Edison, he asked the audience to give Edison a standing ovation in a gesture of respect from one great mind to another. They may have had their differences early on, but they came to deeply admire one another as inventors. They both knew that together their inventions helped bring light to the world.