War of Currents

War of Currents
In the "War of Currents" era (sometimes, "War of the Currents" or "Battle of Currents") in the late 1880s, George Westinghouse and Thomas Edison became adversaries due to Edison's promotion of direct current (DC) for electric power distribution over alternating current (AC) advocated by several European companies[2] and Westinghouse Electric based out of Pittsburgh, PA.

Background
During the initial years of electricity distribution, Edison's direct current was the standard for the United States[3] and Edison did not want to lose all his patent royalties. Direct current worked well with incandescent lamps that were the principal load of the day, and with motors. Direct-current systems could be directly used with storage batteries, providing valuable load-leveling and backup power during interruptions of generator operation. Direct-current generators could be easily paralleled, allowing economical operation by using smaller machines during periods of light load and improving reliability. At the introduction of Edison's system, no practical AC motor was available. Edison had invented a meter to allow customers to be billed for energy proportional to consumption, but this meter worked only with direct current. As of 1882 these were all significant technical advantages of direct current.
Thomas Edison, American inventor and businessman, known as "The Wizard of Menlo Park", pushed for the development of a DC power network.

Alternating current had first developed in Europe due to the work of Guillaume Duchenne (1850s), Ganz Company (1870s), Sebastian Ziani de Ferranti (1880s), Lucien Gaulard, and Galileo Ferraris. In North America one of the believers in the new technology was George Westinghouse. Westinghouse was willing to invest in the technology and hired William Stanley, Jr. to work on an AC distribution system using step up and step down transformers of a new design in 1886[4] . George Westinghouse, American entrepreneur After Stanley left Westinghouse, Oliver Shallenberger took control of and engineer, financially backed the development the AC project. Nikola Tesla joined the team after 1888. Tesla of a practical AC power network. partnered with Westinghouse Electric to commercialize his particular AC system.[5] Westinghouse had previously bought the rights to Tesla's polyphase system patents and other patents for AC transformers from Lucien Gaulard and John Dixon Gibbs. Several undercurrents lay beneath this rivalry. Edison did not have the mathematical background that many new engineering graduates had at the time. C.S. Bradley and Tesla were just two examples of young men who believed in AC, had worked for Edison, and had left Edison due to their belief. AC cannot be properly understood or exploited without a

War of Currents

substantial understanding of mathematics and mathematical physics (see AC power). In addition to the business rivalry of companies like Oerlikon, Siemens, Westinghouse (all AC promotors) and the powerful Edison Electric, a personal rivalry developed between Nikola Tesla and Thomas A. Edison due to certain events: Tesla had worked for Edison but felt he was undervalued (for example, when Edison first learned of the idea of alternating-current power transmission, he dismissed it: "[Tesla's] ideas are splendid, but they are utterly impractical."[6] ). Bad feelings were exacerbated because Tesla had been cheated by Edison of promised compensation for his work.[7] [8] Edison later came to regret that he had not listened to Tesla and used alternating current.[9] The "War of Currents" is often personified by the Tesla vs. Edison personal rivalry, however the "War of Currents" was much larger than that, it involved companies on both sides of the Atlantic which had invested heavily in AC or DC, each company hoped they would dominate the industry.[10]

Electric power transmission

The competing systems

Nikola Tesla, inventor, physicist, and electro-mechanical engineer, was known as "The [1] Wizard of the West" and was instrumental in developing AC networks.

Edison's DC distribution system consisted of generating plants feeding heavy distribution conductors, with customer loads (lighting and motors) tapped off them. The system operated at the same voltage level throughout; for example, 100 volt lamps at the customer's location would be connected to a generator supplying 110 volts, to allow for some voltage drop in the wires between the generator and load. The voltage level was chosen for convenience in lamp manufacture; high-resistance carbon filament lamps could be constructed to withstand 100 volts, and to provide lighting performance economically competitive with gas lighting. At the time it was felt that 100 volts was not likely to present a severe hazard of fatal electric shock. To save on the cost of copper conductors, a three-wire distribution system was used. The three wires were at +110 volts, 0 volts and 110 volts relative potential. 100-volt lamps could be operated between either the +110 or 110 volt legs of the system and the 0-volt "neutral" conductor, which carried only the unbalanced current between the + and sources. The resulting three-wire system used less copper wire for a given quantity of electric power transmitted, while still maintaining (relatively) low voltages. However, even with this innovation, the voltage drop due to the resistance of the system conductors was so high that generating plants had to be located within a mile (12km) or so of the load. Higher voltages could not so easily be used with the DC system because there was no efficient low-cost technology that would allow reduction of a high transmission voltage to a low utilization voltage.

War of Currents

In the alternating current system, a transformer was used between the (relatively) high voltage distribution system and the customer loads. Lamps and small motors could still be operated at some convenient low voltage. However, the transformer would allow power to be transmitted at much higher voltages, say, ten times that of the loads. For a given quantity of power transmitted, the wire cross-sectional area would be inversely proportional to the voltage used. Alternatively, the allowable length of a circuit, given a wire size and allowable voltage drop, would increase approximately as the square of the distribution Westinghouse Early AC System 1887 (U.S. [11] voltage. This had the practical significance that fewer, larger Patent 373035 ) generating plants could serve the load in a given area. Large loads, such as industrial motors or converters for electric railway power, could be served by the same distribution network that fed lighting, by using a transformer with a suitable secondary voltage.

Early transmission analysis

Edison's response to the limitations of direct current was to generate power close to where it was consumed (today called distributed generation) and install large conductors to handle the growing demand for electricity, but this solution proved to be costly (especially for rural areas which could not afford to build a local station[12] or to pay for massive amounts of very thick copper wire), impractical (including, but not limited to, inefficient voltage conversion) and unmanageable. Edison and his company, though, would have profited extensively from the construction of the multitude of power plants required to make electricity available in many areas. Direct current could not easily be converted to higher or lower voltages. This meant that separate electrical lines had to be installed to supply power to appliances that used different voltages, for example, lighting and electric motors. This required more wires to lay and maintain, wasting money and introducing unnecessary hazards. A number of deaths in the Great Blizzard of 1888 were attributed to collapsing overhead power lines in New York City.[13] [14] Alternating current could be transmitted over long distances at high voltages, using lower current, and thus lower energy loss and greater transmission efficiency, and then conveniently stepped down to low voltages for use in homes and factories. When Tesla introduced a system for alternating current generators, transformers, motors, wires and lights in November and December 1887, it became clear that AC was the future of electric power distribution, although DC distribution was used in downtown metropolitan areas for decades thereafter. Low-frequency (5060Hz) alternating currents can be more dangerous than similar levels of DC since the alternating fluctuations can cause the heart to lose coordination, inducing ventricular fibrillation, a deadly heart rhythm that must be corrected immediately.[15] However, any practical distribution system will use voltage levels quite sufficient for a dangerous amount of current to flow, whether it uses alternating or direct current. As precautions against electrocution are similar for both AC and DC, the technical and economic advantages of AC power transmission outweighed this theoretical risk, and it was eventually adopted as the standard worldwide.

War of Currents

Transmission loss
The advantage of AC for distributing power over a distance is due to the ease of changing voltages using a transformer. Available power is the product of current voltage at the load. For a given amount of power, a low voltage requires a higher current and a higher voltage requires a lower current. Since metal conducting wires have an almost fixed electrical resistance, some power will be wasted as heat in the wires. This power loss is given by Joule's laws and is proportional to the square of the current. Thus, if the overall transmitted power is the same, and given the constraints of practical conductor sizes, high-current, low-voltage transmissions will suffer a much greater power loss than low-current, high-voltage ones. This holds whether DC or AC is used. Converting DC power from one voltage to another requires a large spinning rotary converter or motor-generator set, which was difficult, expensive, inefficient, and required maintenance, whereas with AC the voltage can be changed with simple and efficient transformers that have no moving parts and require very little maintenance. This was the key to the success of the AC system. Modern transmission Tesla's US390721 Patent for a "Dynamo Electric Machine" grids regularly use AC voltages up to 765,000 volts.[16] Power electronic devices such as the mercury arc valve and thyristor made high-voltage direct current transmission practical by improving the reliability and efficiency of conversion between alternating and direct current. Alternating-current transmission lines have losses that do not occur with direct current. Due to the skin effect, a conductor will have a higher resistance to alternating current than to direct current; the effect is measurable and of practical significance for large conductors carrying thousands of amperes. The increased resistance due to the skin effect can be offset by changing the shape of conductors from a solid core to a braid of many small (isolated) wires. However, total losses in systems using high-voltage transmission and transformers to reduce the voltage are very much lower than DC transmission at working voltage.

Current wars
Edison's publicity campaign
Edison carried out a campaign to discourage the use[17] of alternating current, including spreading disinformation on fatal AC accidents, publicly killing animals, and lobbying against the use of AC in state legislatures. Edison directed his technicians, primarily Arthur Kennelly and Harold P. Brown,[18] to preside over several AC-driven killings of animals, primarily stray cats and dogs but also unwanted cattle and horses. Acting on these directives, they were to demonstrate to the press that alternating current was more dangerous than Edison's system of direct current.[19] He also tried to popularize the term for being electrocuted as being "Westinghoused". Years after DC had lost the "war of the currents," in 1902, his film crew made a movie of the electrocution with high voltage AC, supervised by Edison employees, of Topsy, a Coney Island circus elephant which had recently killed three men.[20]

War of Currents Edison opposed capital punishment, but his desire to disparage the system of alternating current led to the invention of the electric chair. Harold P. Brown, who was being secretly paid by Edison, built the first electric chair for the state of New York to promote the idea that alternating current was deadlier than DC.[21] When the chair was first used, on August 6, 1890, the technicians on hand misjudged the voltage needed to kill the condemned prisoner, William Kemmler. The first jolt of electricity was not enough to kill Kemmler, and only left him badly injured. The procedure had to be repeated and a reporter on hand described it as "an awful spectacle, far worse than hanging." George Westinghouse commented: "They would have done better using an axe."[22]

Niagara Falls
In 1889, the first AC hydroelectric plant, Williamette Falls Station, began operation in Oregon City, Oregon.[23] In 1890, the Niagara Falls Power Company (NFPC) and its subsidiary Cataract Company formed the International Niagara Commission composed of experts, to analyze proposals to harness Niagara Falls to generate electricity. The commission was led by Sir William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) and included Eleuthre Mascart from France, William Unwin from England, Coleman Sellers from the US, and Thodore Turrettini from Switzerland. It was backed by entrepreneurs such as J. P. Morgan, Lord Rothschild, and John Jacob Astor IV. Among 19 proposals, they even briefly considered compressed air as a power transmission medium, but preferred electricity. But they could not decide which method would be best overall. In 1893, NFPC was finally convinced by George Forbes to award the contract to Westinghouse, and to reject General Electric and Edison's proposal. Work began in 1893 on the Niagara Falls generation project: power was to be generated and transmitted as alternating current, at a frequency of 25Hz to minimize impedance losses in transmission (changed to 60Hz in the 1950s). Some doubted that the system would generate enough electricity to power industry in Buffalo. Tesla was sure it would work, saying that Niagara Falls could power the entire eastern United States. None of the previous polyphase alternating current transmission demonstration projects were on the scale of power available from Niagara: The Lauffen-Neckar demonstration in 1891 Westinghouse successfully used Tesla's AC system in the commercial Ames Hydroelectric Generating Plant in 1891 The Chicago World's Fair in 1893 exhibited a complete polyphase generation and distribution system installed by Westinghouse Almirian Decker designed a three-phase AC system at Mill Creek California in 1893 On November 16, 1896, electrical power was transmitted to industries in Buffalo from the hydroelectric generators at the Edward Dean Adams Station at Niagara Falls. The generators were built by Westinghouse Electric Corporation using Tesla's AC system patent. The nameplates on the generators bore Tesla's name. To appease the interests of General Electric, they were awarded the contract to construct the transmission lines to Buffalo using the Tesla patents.[24]

Competition outcome
The "end" of the "War of Currents" was marked in 1891 by the International Electro-Technical Exhibition 1891 in Frankfurt Germany (Die Elektrotechnische Ausstellung). During this exposition a three phase AC power system developed by Mikhail Dolivo-Dobrovolsky and Oerlikon was able to send power over 109 miles from Lauffen to Frankfurt. It successfully operated motors and lights at the fair. Many corporate technical representatives (including E.W. Rice of Thomson-Houston Electric Company (what became General Electric)) attended.[25] The technical advisors and representatives were impressed. The following year General Electric formed and immediately invested heavily in AC power (at this time Thomas Edison's opinions on company direction were muted by President Coffin and the GE board of directors). Westinghouse was already ahead in AC, but it only took a few years for General Electric to catch up, mainly thanks to Charles Proteus Steinmetz, a Prussian mathematician who was the first person

War of Currents to fully understand AC power from a solid mathematical standpoint. General Electric hired many talented new engineers to improve its design of transformers, generators, motors and other apparatus.[26] In Europe Siemens and Halske became the dominant force. Three phase 60 Hz at 120 volts became the dominant system in North America while 220-240 volts at 50 Hz became the standard in Europe. Alternating current power transmission networks today provide redundant paths and lines for power routing from any power plant to any load center, based on the economics of the transmission path, the cost of power, and the importance of keeping a particular load center powered at all times. Generators (such as hydroelectric sites) can be located far from the loads.

Remnant and existent DC systems

Some cities continued to use DC well into the 20th century. For example, central Helsinki had a DC network until the late 1940s, and Stockholm lost its dwindling DC network as late as the 1970s. A mercury arc valve rectifier station could convert AC to DC where networks were still used. Parts of Boston, Massachusetts along Beacon Street and Commonwealth Avenue still used 110 volts DC in the 1960s, causing many destroyed small appliances (typically hair dryers and phonographs) used by Boston University students who ignored warnings about the electricity supply. New York City's electric utility company, Consolidated Edison, continued to supply direct current to customers who had adopted it early in the twentieth century, mainly for elevators. The New Yorker Hotel, constructed in 1929, had a large direct-current power plant and did not convert fully to alternating-current service until well into the 1960s.[27] Ironically, this was the same building in which AC pioneer Nikola Tesla spent his last years, and where he died in 1943. In January 1998, Consolidated Edison started to eliminate DC service. At that time there were 4,600 DC customers. By 2006, there were only 60 customers using DC service, and on November 14, 2007, the last direct-current distribution by Con Edison was shut down. Customers still using DC were provided with on-site AC to DC rectifiers.[28] Other isolated uses remained, Alcatraz Island, as long as it was a prison up through 1963 generated its own DC power. The Central Electricity Generating Board in the UK continued to maintain a 200volt DC generating station at Bankside Power Station on the River Thames in London as late as 1981. It exclusively powered DC printing machinery in Fleet Street, then the heart of the UK's newspaper industry. It was decommissioned later in 1981 when the newspaper industry moved into the developing docklands area further down the river (using modern AC powered equipment). The building was converted into an art gallery, the Tate Modern. Electric railways that use a third-rail system generally employ DC power between 500 and 750 volts; railways with overhead catenary lines use a number of power schemes including both high-voltage AC and high-current DC. High voltage direct current (HVDC) systems are used for bulk transmission of energy from distant generating stations or for interconnection of separate alternating-current systems. These HVDC systems use electronic devices like mercury arc valves, thyristors or IGBTs that were unavailable during the War of Currents era. Power is still converted to and from alternating current at each side of the modern HVDC link. The advantages of HVDC over AC systems for bulk transmission include higher power ratings for a given line (important since installing new lines and even upgrading old ones is extremely expensive) and better control of power flows, especially in transient and emergency conditions that can often lead to blackouts. Many modern plants now use HVDC as an alternative to AC systems for long distance, high load transmission, especially in developing countries such as China, India and Brazil. (See List of HVDC projects for more details.) While DC distribution systems over significant distances are essentially extinct, DC power is still common when distances are small, and especially when energy storage or conversion uses batteries or fuel cells. These applications include: Electronics, including Integrated circuits, high-power transmitters and computers Vehicle starting, lighting, and ignition systems

War of Currents Hybrid and all-electric vehicle propulsion with internal power-supply Telecommunication plant power (wired and cellular mobile) Uninterruptible power for computer systems Utility-scale battery systems "Off-grid" isolated power installations using wind or solar power

In these applications, direct current may be used directly or converted to alternating current using power electronic devices. In the future, this may provide a way to supply energy to a grid from distributed sources. For example, hybrid vehicle owners may rent the capacity of their vehicle's batteries for load-levelling purposes by the local electrical utility company.

International War of Currents

Prototype of the high efficiency, closed core shunt connection transformer (Szchenyi Istvn Memorial Exhibiton, Nagycenk, Hungary 1885).

The Hungarian "ZBD" Team (Kroly Zipernowsky, Ott Blthy, Miksa Dri) They were the developers of the transformer [29] (1884-1885).

The International Electro-Technical Exhibition of 1891 featured the long distance transmission of high-power, three-phase electric current. It was held between 16 May and 19 October on the disused site of the three former Westbahnhfe (Western Railway Stations) in Frankfurt am Main. The exhibition featured the first long distance transmission of high-power, three-phase electric current, which was generated 175km away at Lauffen am Neckar. As a result of this successful field trial, three-phase current became established for electrical transmission networks throughout the world. As far as Germany was concerned, the International Electro-Technical Exhibition settled once and for all the question of the most economical means of transmitting electrical energy. When the exhibition closed, the power station at Lauffen continued in operation, providing electricity for the administrative capital, Heilbronn, making it the first place to be equipped with three-phase AC power.

War of Currents

References
[1] Margaret Cheney, Tesla: Man Out of Time. Page 21. (cf. "Everyone in London is talking about the New Wizard of the Westand they don't mean Mr. Edison".) [2] AC Power History: http:/ / www. edisontechcenter. org/ AC-PowerHistory. html [3] McNichol, T. (2006). AC/DC: The savage tale of the first standards war. San Francisco, CA.: Jossey-Bass. [4] Great Barrington Historical Society, Great Barrington, Massachusetts [5] "AC vs DC" (http:/ / www. ieeeghn. org/ wiki/ index. php/ AC_vs. _DC). IEEE Global History Network. IEEE. . Retrieved 21 July 2011. [6] Richard Munson, From Edison to Enron: The Business of Power and what it Means for the Future of Electricity. Page 23 [7] Tesla was promised 50,000 dollars for work to improve Edison's inefficient dynamo. Tesla did improve the dynamos after nearly a year's worth of work, but Edison did not pay him the promised money. Edison went as far as trying to say he was joking, saying Tesla, you don't understand our American humor. For more on this see, "Tesla: Man Out of Time" By Margaret Cheney (Simon and Schuster, 2001. ISBN 0-7432-1536-2), pages 56-57. [8] H. W. Brands, The Reckless Decade. Page 48. [9] Cheney, M., et al., (1999). Tesla, master of lightning. Page 19. (cf., "Edison would much later admit that the biggest mistake he ever made was in trying to develop direct current, rather than the vastly superior alternating".) [10] Deutsches Museum [11] http:/ / www. google. com/ patents?vid=373035 [12] H. W. Brands, Reckless Decade. Page 50. [13] Some companies had their DC lines in that city buried underground for safety, but many lines still ran overhead. [14] Untitled Document (http:/ / www. vny. cuny. edu/ blizzard/ building/ building. html) [15] Wiggers, C. J. et al. 1940 [16] Donald G. Fink and H. Wayne Beaty, Standard Handbook for Electrical Engineers, Eleventh Edition, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1978, ISBN 0-07-020974-X, chapter 14, page 14-3 "Overhead power transmission" [17] Brandon, C. (1999). The electric chair: an unnatural American history. Page 72. (cf. "Edison and his captains embarked on a no-holds-barred smear campaign designed to discredit AC as too dangerous [...]" [18] Brown and Edison's letters, as well as Brown and Kennelly's letters, indicate Brown was taking weekly directions from Edison's company. For more see, Brandon, C. (1999). The electric chair: an unnatural American history. Page 70. [19] Brandon, C. (1999). The electric chair: an unnatural American history. Page 9 (cf. "When New York began testing its new electric chair on dogs, cats, cattle and horses in 1889 it invited reporters to witness the instant death that results".) [20] Electrocuting an Elephant (http:/ / www. imdb. com/ title/ tt0231523/ plotsummary) [21] Death and Money - The History of the Electric Chair (http:/ / inventors. about. com/ library/ weekly/ aa102497. htm) [22] Tom McNichol, AC/DC: the savage tale of the first standards war, John Wiley and Sons, 2006 ISBN 0787982679, p. 125 [23] Energy Timelines Hydropower (http:/ / www. eia. doe. gov/ kids/ energy. cfm?page=tl_hydropower) [24] Berton, P. (1997). Niagara: a history of the Falls. Page 163. (cf., As a form of compromise, General Electric was given the contract to build the transmission and distribution lines to Buffalo, using the Tesla patents.) [25] The Schenectady Museum [26] The General Electric Story by the Hall of History [27] Tom Blalock, Powering the New Yorker: A Hotel's Unique Direct Current System, in IEEE Power and Energy Magazine, Jan/Feb 2006 [28] Jennifer Lee, New York Times November 16, 2007, " Off Goes the Power Current Started by Thomas Edison (http:/ / cityroom. blogs. nytimes. com/ 2007/ 11/ 14/ off-goes-the-power-current-started-by-thomas-edison/ )" (retrieved 2007 November 16) [29] http:/ / www. omikk. bme. hu/ archivum/ angol/ htm/ blathy_o. htm

Further reading
Berton, Pierre (1997). Niagara: a history of the Falls. New York: Kodansha International. Beyer, Rick (2003). The greatest stories never told: 100 tales from history to astonish, bewilder, & stupefy. New York: HarperResource. Pages 122 - 123. Bordeau, Sanford P. (1982). Volts to Hertzthe rise of electricity: from the compass to the radio through the works of sixteen great men of science whose names are used in measuring electricity and magnetism. Minneapolis, Minn: Burgess Pub. Co. Brandon, Craig (1999). The electric chair: an unnatural American history. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co. Brands, Henry William (1995). The reckless decade: America in the 1890s. New York: St. Martin's Press. Cheney, Margaret, Uth, Robert, & Glenn, Jim (1999). Tesla, master of lightning. New York: MetroBooks. Conot, Robert, A Streak of Luck: The Life and Legend of Thomas Alva Edison. New York: Seaview Books, Dobson, K., & Roberts, M. D. (2002). Physics: teacher resource pack. Cheltenham: Nelson Thornes.

War of Currents Dommermuth-Costa, C. (1994). Nikola Tesla: a spark of genius. Minneapolis: Lerner Publications Co. Edquist, Charles, Hommen, Leif, & Tsipouri, Lena J. (2000). Public technology procurement and innovation. Economics of science, technology, and innovation, v. 16. Boston: Kluwer Academic. The Electrical Engineer, " A new system of alternating current motors and transformers (http://books.google. com/books?vid=0XG_sLtIydoOYRPzdNH&id=USQAAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA568&lpg=PA568)". (1884). London: Biggs & Co. Pages 568 - 572. The Electrical Engineer, " Practical electrical problems at Chicago (http://books.google.com/ books?vid=0MVOc40C5abUxjH6nzQ&id=kQsAAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA489&lpg=PA489)". (1884). London: Biggs & Co. Pages 458 - 459, 484 - 485, and 489 - 490. Foster, Abram John (1979). The coming of the electrical age to the United States. New York: Arno Press. Mats Fridlund & Helmut Maier, The second battle of the currents: a comparative study of engineering nationalism in German and Swedish electric power, 1921-1961. Hughes, Thomas Parke (1983). Networks of power: electrification in Western society, 1880-1930. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Tom McNichol AC/DC: the savage tale of the first standards war,John Wiley and Sons, 2006 ISBN 0-7879-8267-9 Munson, Richard (2005). From Edison to Enron: the business of power and what it means for the future of electricity. Westport, Conn: Praeger Publishers. Reynolds, Terry S., and Bernstein, Theodore. Edison and the Chair, IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, March 1989, pp.1928. Seifer, Marc J. (1998). Wizard: the life and times of Nikola Tesla : biography of a genius. Secaucus, N.J.: Carol Pub. Silverberg, Robert, Light for the World, Edison and the Electric Power Industry. Princeton: Van Nostrand, 1967, pp.229243. Scholnick, Robert J. (1992). American literature and science. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. Pages 157 - 171. Schurr, Sam H., Burwell, Calvin C., Devine, Warren D., Sonenblum, Sidney (1990). Electricity in the American economy: agent of technological progress. Contributions in economics and economic history, no. 117. New York: Greenwood Press. Walker, James Blaine (1949). The epic of American industry. New York: Harper. Westinghouse Electric Corporation, "Electric power transmission patents; Tesla polyphase system. (Transmission of power; polyphase system; Tesla patents) Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company, Collection of Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company contracts, Pittsburgh, Pa.

External links
Thomas Edison Hates Cats (http://www.pinkyshow.org/videos/thomas-edison-hates-cats/) - AC vs DC an online video mini-history. War of the Currents (http://www.pbs.org/tesla/ll/ll_warcur.html). PBS. War of the Currents (http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/dept/Courses/E-24/E-24Projects/MariaChang/ The_War_of_Currents/The_War_of_Currents.htm). nuc.berkeley.edu.

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