No, this is not about a rock group, good as they are, but about currents, and not the eating kind either.
Image copied from https://teslaresearch.jimdofree.com/war-of-currents/
General information:
The war of currents, also known as the battle of the currents, started all the way back in the 1870s, back when the use of electricity was still largely in its infancy.
In case you don’t know (unlikely but covering my bases here), AC is alternating current and DC is direct current. Both were used for lighting, and it was the proliferation of that lighting that brought the two into competition.
There are two prominent names that are associated with the war, Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla. Edison was working on DC, which was used to light many homes. Tesla was working on AC, which at the time was being used for larger lighting needs such as street lamps.
Edison began a campaign to discredit AC as a useable form of electricity – nothing to do with the threat to his royalties on patents of course, no, no. It was all about AC being more dangerous. That’s why he started electrocuting animals. These were mostly stray (like that makes a difference) dogs and cats. He also used cattle and horses. And most notably, in Coney Island, he decided to work on Topsy, an elephant. Yes, Topsy was publically topped.
There is an inherent danger to high voltage transmission, that’s why in the UK I can remember all the public information films about electricity. If you want to scare a child, watch the PLAY SAFE campaign from 1978 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-JfnhABs9U), that might even be Bernard Cribbins doing the voiceover.
In the USA, the bid to power the Chicago World’s Fair was won by and AC system. Then the Niagara Falls Power Company used the same system too. By 1896, General Electric was generating on the AC system too.
There were two big advantages that AC has over DC. The first is the ability to change voltage relatively easily with the use of a transformer, mostly these can be found as substations, but for a smaller scale, transformers the sort of thing you’ll see on a laptop charging cable. The second is that DC loses a lot of energy when it travels, so can’t be sent by wire over long distances.
A note on Edison; don’t believe the hype. Aside from electrocuting animals, he also didn’t invent the lightbulb, the man who did was Joseph Swan, a Brit. Though this isn’t as clear as one might like it to be, so worth looking into the history of that if it interests you.
Why I researched this:
So why have I included this on my blog? It’s this war between electrical currents that leads to the aetheric powers parliamentary bill that forms the backdrop in “Shades” book one of the Aether Chronicles.
Resources:
https://www.energy.gov/articles/war-currents-ac-vs-dc-power
https://teslaresearch.jimdofree.com/war-of-currents/
https://www.wired.com/2008/01/dayintech-0104/
Shades Of Aether 