In the era of the Electric Wars of the late 1880s, George Westinghouse and Thomas Edison were rivals as Edison pushed direct current (DC) for power distribution to replace alternating current (AC) pioneered by Westinghouse and Nikola Tesla .
In the early days of electricity distribution, Edison’s direct current was the standard in the United States, and Edison didn’t want to lose all his patent licenses.
DC worked well on incandescent lamps (which were the first to take the brunt of the time) and electric motors. DC systems can be used directly with batteries, providing valuable load sharing and backup power during generator outages.
DC generators can simply be connected in parallel, enabling economical operation by using smaller machines during off-peak hours and increasing reliability.
When Edison’s system was introduced, there were no practical AC motors. Edison invented an electric meter that allowed customers to be charged for energy proportional to consumption, but the meter only worked with direct current. These were important technical advantages of direct current from 1882 onwards.
Through his study of rotating magnetic fields, Tesla developed a system for generating, transmitting and using alternating current. He collaborated with George Westinghouse to commercialize the system. Westinghouse previously purchased the rights to Tesla’s polyphase system patents and other AC transformer patents from Lucien Gaulard and John Dixon Gibbs.
Behind this competition are several undercurrents. Edison was a brute force experimenter, but not a mathematician. AC cannot be properly understood or used without a basic understanding of the mathematics and mathematical physics that Tesla possessed.
Tesla worked for Edison, but was not appreciated (for example, when Edison first heard about Tesla’s AC transmission idea, he dismissed it: Tesla’s idea was great, but totally impractical.
The mood was even worse as Tesla was cheated by Edison of promising compensation for his work. Edison later regretted not listening to Tesla and using AC power.
