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.
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
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
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
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.
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
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.
Equipment that runs off of solar PV arrays. ?
That is one case, but we were talking about large scale power distribution over non trivial distances.
Jon
If you don't count Tesla letting Westinghouse off the hook.
----- Like many geniuses Tesla wasn't playing with a full deck. The guy wanted to marry a pigeon.
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
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