Thats why Westinghouse beat Edison in the early days of deciding what electical distribution system to use, Westinghouse (scientist) wanted AC, Edison (who was more of an inventor than a scientist) would not let go of his prejudice for DC. I still have an old AC/DC radio from those days, when radios were sold to work on either distribution system.
Westinghouse was an inventor, and entrepreneur (as was Edison) - who recognized good ideas when he saw them and a way to get around Edison's stranglehold on the electrical "lighting" systems. This was weakened before Tesla, by Gaulard and Gibbs who invented the transformer (1886 or thereabouts for the first AC transmission). - making long distance transmission possible. polyphase machines invented by Tesla were the icing on the cake, and 3 phase systems followed soon after. Edison wanted to hang onto his empire- so fought tooth and nail against AC- he had a good thing going. Tesla once worked for him but got shafted. As for the radio- If I recall correctly, until the late 1920's all radios were battery powered. Then AC/DC units came into use. Better ones used transformers to get the various voltages, filament and plate (replacing the old A and B batteries). The typical smaller radios that were sold in the 40's and 50's would work on DC as they did not have a transformer, and tubes operated on the rectified line voltage, with tube filaments in series. This was done, not with intent to use them on DC supplies but because they were considerably cheaper to build but could have a hot chassis (safety? what's that?).
The history of those times is very interesting. An often ignored inventor who thought things out before trying them (as opposed to the Edison approach) , was Elihu Thompson.