OT Killing your wife

I was watching a BBC show called "Light Fantastic" Part of the show shows how Edison was trying to build a market for electricity. It showed many appliances such as the vacuum cleaner, kitchen mixer and the phonograph.

They then showed a logo sign that read.........Don't kill your wife with work! Let electricity do it.

Reply to
Metspitzer
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Edison believed DC was safer. Westinghouse was his BIG competitor.

When the country moved from hanging to electrocution for prisoners sentenced to death........

Edison called it westinghousing them........

AC still won out as the power for the nation

Reply to
bob haller

Edison believed DC was safer. Westinghouse was his BIG competitor.

When the country moved from hanging to electrocution for prisoners sentenced to death........

Edison called it westinghousing them........

AC still won out as the power for the nation

________________________________________ You are right that it was a Westinghouse / Edison battle, but in reality, the man behind pushing for AC (who was robbed by Westinghouse, in some people's view) was Tesla.

Bob-tx

Reply to
Bob-tx

Edison was a hack. Westinghouse had the induction and polyphase generation patents from Nikola Tesla in his pocket, which established a superior system of electrical power generation and distribution, which we are still using to this day.

Jon

Reply to
Jon Danniken

Edison and Tesla were inventors. Westinghouse was a con artist marketer who porked Tesla.

DC makes a lot more sense in some cases. They just didn't have the technology back then. Ask yourself why so many new high power/high voltage long distance lines are DC.

Reply to
George

Edison was a hack inventor who relied on his underlings for ideas and products. Tesla came up with his inventions as the product of his own intellectual ability.

In what cases?

No, why don't you tell me, or at least provide an example of what exactly you are talking about.

Jon

Reply to
Jon Danniken

The superiority of AC over DC for power transmission is due solely to these two facts: a) the higher the voltage, the lower the losses in transmission. b) AC can drive a transformer, but DC cannot.

Thus, it's possible to step AC voltage up arbitrarily high for transmission to minimize losses, then step it back down for distribution. This can't be done with DC.

Reply to
Doug Miller

Equipment that runs off of solar PV arrays. ?

Reply to
gfretwell

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Reply to
George

That is one case, but we were talking about large scale power distribution over non trivial distances.

Jon

Reply to
Jon Danniken

If you don't count Tesla letting Westinghouse off the hook.

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agreements between Westinghouse and Tesla called for the businessman to pay the inventor a royalty of two dollars and fifty cents - for every horsepower of AC equipment sold. Even a century ago, the royalties would be enough to make Tesla one of the wealthiest men in the world. (Were such royalties to be paid on equipment in use today, the royalties on AC generators alone would be worth more than seven and a half billion dollars.)

----- Like many geniuses Tesla wasn't playing with a full deck. The guy wanted to marry a pigeon.

Reply to
Metspitzer

And the complementary passage from your link above:

"Westinghouse came to Tesla and described the situation. Tesla replied with these words: "Mr. Westinghouse, you have been my friend, you believed in me when others had no faith; you were brave enough to go ahead... when others lacked courage; you supported me when even your own engineers lacked vision... you have stood by me as a friend...

"Here is your contract, and here is my contract. I will tear both of them to pieces, and you will no longer have any troubles from my royalties. Is that sufficient?""

Possibly not the most practical decision, but you can't blame Westinghouse for him doing it.

Jon

Reply to
Jon Danniken

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