War of current

Name: Ahmed el sayed el kassar

Reg no. : 20102877
Professor: DR. Ahmed Anas
Eng: Mahmoud Samy

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Introduction 1 Actual Marks

Body text 5

Tables and/or figures 1

Conclusion and/or summary 1

References 2

Total 10
Table of content :
1) Intro duction
2) Edison’s life
1) Biography
2) Invention
3) Edison and the DC story

3) Tesla’s life
1) Biography
2) Invention
3) Westinghouse
4) The war between AC and DC
1) Comparison between the 2 currents
2) Advantages and disadvantages of there transmission system
5) The Conclusion
First : Introduction
The 19th-century competition between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse over which electric
power delivery system would be used in the United States (often referred to as the "war of the
currents") is the catalyst to most of the electrical revolution in our current age. The war was decided by
one system being more economically efficient than the other. This report will cover the lives of the two
great inventors and how they invented their respective currents, a detailed description of their rivalry
and the deciding factors in why one won over the other and finally, the differences between both
currents and why the losing current didn’t go extinct despite being deemed the inferior system back
then.
2nd: Edison
First: biography
Thomas Edison, in full Thomas Alva Edison, (born February 11, 1847, Milan,
Ohio, U.S.—died October 18, 1931, West Orange, New Jersey), American
inventor who, singly or jointly, held a world-record 1,093 patents. In
addition, he created the world’s first industrial research laboratory.

Second: Invention
1) Thomas Edison’s Phonograph
Considered to be the first great Thomas Edison invention, and his life-long favorite, the
phonograph would record the spoken voice and play it back.

When speaking into the receiver, the sound

vibration of the voice would cause a needle
to create indentations on a drum wrapped
with tin foil. Later Edison would adopt
cylinders and discs to permanently record
music.

The first recorded message was of Thomas

Edison speaking “Mary had a little lamb”,
which greatly delighted and surprised Edison
and his staff when they first heard it played
back to them

1) Thomas Edison’s Light Bulb

Thomas Edison is most well known for his invention of the light bulb. Contrary to popular
belief, Edison did not invent the light bulb; it had been around for a number of years. The
electric lights at the time, however, were unreliable, expensive, and short-lived. Over twenty
distinct efforts by other inventors the world over were already underway when Edison
entered the light bulb invention race.

By creating a vacuum inside the bulb, finding the right

filament to use, and running lower voltage through the bulb,
Edison was able to achieve a light bulb that lasted for many
hours. This was a substantial improvement, and one that led
with more improvements, to making the light bulb practical
and economical.
Of course, Edison also later invented the entire electric utility system so he could power all
those light bulbs, motors and other appliances that soon followed.

3)Thomas Edison’s
Electrographic Vote
Recorder
Edison was 22 years old and working as a telegrapher when he filed his first patent for the
Electrographic Vote Recorder.
The device was made with the goal of helping legislators in the US Congress record their
votes in a quicker fashion than the voice vote system.
To work, a voting device was connected to a clerk’s desk where the names of the legislators
were embedded. The legislators would move a switch to either yes or no, sending electric
current to the device at the clerks desk. Yes and No wheels kept track of the votes and
tabulated the final results

Third: Edison and the DC story

Edison built this DC generator based on his 1878 design. The two long,
erotically oriented black cylinders are the field coils that generate the
magnetic field in which the rotor turns. The shape of those coils led the lab
workers who worked on this design to refer it as 'The Long-legged Mary-Ann'.
The rotor is on the bottom, behind an upright lever. The lever controls a switch
that can be set so he power generated by the rotor flows through the field coils
in a parallel circuit, allowing the generator to
create its own field
This type of generator was built in various sizes,
and there are versions up to two meters high.
Large horizontal versions were used for the
world's first power plant, Pearl Street Central
Generating Station. Several of these 'Jumbos'
were used to power 10,000 light bulbs in a
district of Manhattan. Edison's incandescent
light bulbs were powered with 110 volts.
3rd : tesla
First: biography
Nikola Tesla, (born July 9/10, 1856, Smiljan, Austrian Empire [now in Croatia]—died
January 7, 1943, New York, New York, U.S.)
Tesla was from a family of Serbian origin. His father was an Orthodox priest; his mother
was unschooled but highly intelligent. As he matured, he displayed remarkable imagination
and creativity as well as a poetic touch.

Second: Invention
Tesla is a Serbian American inventor and engineer who discovered and patented the
rotating magnetic field, the basis of most alternating-current machinery. He also developed
the three-phase system of electric power transmission. He immigrated to the United States
in 1884 and sold the patent rights to his system of alternating-current dynamos,
transformers, and motors to George Westinghouse. In 1891 he invented the Tesla coil, an
induction coil widely used in radio technology.
At Graz he first saw the Gramme dynamo, which
operated as a generator and, when reversed,
became an electric motor, and he conceived a way
to use alternating current to advantage. Later, at
Budapest, he visualized the principle of the rotating
magnetic field and developed plans for an induction
motor that would become his first step toward the
successful utilization of alternating current

THIRD: WESTINGHOUSE
In 1882 Tesla went to work in Paris for the Continental Edison Company, and, while on
assignment to Strassburg in 1883, he constructed, after work hours, his first induction
motor. Tesla sailed for America in 1884, arriving in New York with four cents in his pocket, a
few of his own poems, and calculations for a flying machine. He first found employment with
Thomas Edison, but the two inventors were far apart in background and methods, and their
separation was inevitable.
In May 1888 George Westinghouse, head of the Westinghouse Electric Company in
Pittsburgh, bought the patent rights to Tesla’s polyphase system of alternating-current
dynamos, transformers, and motors. The transaction precipitated a titanic power struggle
between Edison’s direct-current systems and the Tesla-
Westinghouse alternating-current approach, which
eventually won out.
Fourth: The war between AC and DC (Edison vs Tesla)
Tesla was a fan of alternating current in which the electric charge changes direction
periodically. Changing directions is crucial to maintaining a steady supply of electricity
because it does not overpower outlets. This means it can provide more power and transmit
power over longer distances. It’s the reason AC powers our homes and other large
appliances whereas DC powers smaller items like flashlights. But Edison didn’t care about
AC because it could have hurt the sales of direct current since he owned all the patents for
DC. According to Nikola Tesla, a manager at Edison’s company offered him a $50,000
bonus if he could improve some machines that ran on DC.
When he did, the manager refused to pay up. Another account of the story has Edison
telling Tesla: “You don’t understand our American humor.” Regardless of how it played out,
Tesla quit and set off to form his own electric company the following year in 1885. But his
investors showed little interest and decided to take the company and all of Tesla’s patents
which they could do because Tesla had assigned the patents to the company in exchange
for stock which was now worthless.
After losing his company, Tesla had to take a job digging ditches for two dollars a day just to
survive. But his fortunes would change. In 1887, Tesla invented an induction motor that ran
on alternating current. The motor was the most efficient way to convert electricity to
mechanical power. Aversion of it powers Tesla’s vehicles which took its name from the
inventor. He patented the motor and showed it off the following year at the American
Institute of Electrical Engineers that caught the attention of George Westinghouse, a major
player in the electric market who realized Tesla’s AC motor might just be what he needed to
complete his alternating current system and compete against Edison’s DC system.
The war of the Current Begins
Edison secretly financed the electric chair that used AC to prove its dangerousness. Also, in
1903, he publicly tortured animals to prove his point and produced a film concerning that
called “Electrocuting an Elephant”.
Despite Edison’s schemes, good things were happening for Westinghouse and Tesla. They
underbid Edison and his newly formed company General Electric to illuminate the World’s
Colombian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. The exposition showed the 27 million people who
attended that AC would power the future.
Their success continued when they beat out Edison’s General Electric again to build the
world’s first alternating current power plant in Niagara Falls. The hydroelectric power station
was a massive success and helped light up Buffalo, New York. The building of the plant
also meant Tesla became a pioneer in renewable energy.
Westinghouse and Tesla won the war of the currents but Westinghouse’s company went
into debt. In 1897, Westinghouse asked Tesla if his royalties could be reduced in a
desperate attempt to save the company. Tesla was so compelled by compassion for his
friend, at the same time grateful to Westinghouse for believing in him when no one else
would.
Tesla willingly walked away from $12 million in royalties; over $300 million today’s terms.
Had he held on to those royalties over time, he would have likely become the wealthiest
person on the planet and the first person with a billion-dollar net worth.
Teslas’ act saved Westinghouse. In return, Westinghouse paid Tesla $216,000, about $60
million today for the rights to use as AC patents forever. With that money, Tesla became
financially independent and set up a series of laboratories in New York for new projects
where he was visited by the rich and famous, including his close friend Mark Twain.
Inventions that were far ahead of their time.
During his lifetime, Tesla held over 300 patents in his lifetime. He created an early version of neon
lighting, the Tesla turbine, and pioneered x-ray technology.
Another stand-out invention was one of the first remote controls. In 1898, Tesla controlled a
miniature boat at Madison Square Garden in New York; the crowd thought he was using magic to
make it move. That would be the ancestor to today’s remote-controlled drones.
One of his most well-known inventions is the Tesla coil, a device that can produce large amounts of
high voltage electricity and receive powerful radio signals when they resonated at the same
frequency.
Tesla was getting ready to broadcast his first radio signal, but a fire destroyed his lab in 1895. He
lost years of research and equipment.
Big dreams turned into Ash.
The fire would be the turning point in his life that led to a downhill spiral. While Tesla was working on
radio, an Italian entrepreneur, Guglielmo Marconi, was doing the same in England. Later, Marconi
tried to acquire patent rights in the US but failed because it was too similar to Tesla’s. However,
things changed when Marconi sent the world’s first transatlantic radio message in 1901 using 17 of
Tesla’s patents. Edison then threw his financial support behind Marconi.
Tesla had no problem with Marconi’s achievements; until the US Patent Office suddenly changed its
mind and awarded Marconi a patent for inventing the radio. Marconi won the Nobel Prize in Physics,
which was only possible due to Tesla’s work. Hence, Tesla sued Marconi, but the case settled in
Tesla’s favour only after his death. In short, that radio incident negatively impacted the rest of
Tesla’s career.
The Inventor faded into obscurity.
Tesla was obsessed with bringing wireless communication to the world and built a huge wireless
transmission station in Long Island, New York called Wardenclyffe Tower. He imagined a world
where we could send and receive messages wirelessly. Unfortunately, financial backers did not have
enough faith in his project. He had no choice but to abandon his dream project and eventually lost
Wardenclyffe Tower to foreclosure. Tesla’s mental health deteriorated.
In his last decade, Westinghouse Corporation hired him as a consultant and paid for his hotel room.
He lived rent-free but died in debt.
So why did one of the greatest inventors of all time fade into obscurity and die penniless? You could
say Nikola Tesla was unlucky when the fire burned down his New York lab. But the main reason is
‘Tesla was not a capitalist’; he made decisions that one with more business acumen would not do. It
shows how his biggest concern, to the pursuit of science for the betterment of humanity, turned his
decisions.
Tesla wanted to change the world and he did. Thanks in part to Elon Musk’s company, people are
starting to learn more about the man who inspired the company, a man whose inventions
would power our entire planet. It’s because of Tesla that modern society functions the way it does.
Tesla’s mother called him a child of light and she was quite right.

This comparison will show you why AC is better than DC

and why DC is safer to be used
Advantages of AC Transmission
1) In an AC system, the electric power can be
generated at high voltages (such as 3.3
kV, 6.6 kV, 11 kV).
2) The AC voltage can be increased with the help
of a step-up transformer or can be
decreased using the step-down transformer easily
and efficiently. Therefore, the
AC transmission permits to transmit the electric power at high voltages and to
distribute it at lower voltages.
3) The repair and maintenance of AC substation and transmission lines is easy and
less expensive.
4) The AC switchgears such as circuit breakers are cheaper than DC switchgear.
Disadvantages of AC Transmission
1) The construction of AC transmission lines is more complicated than the DC
transmission lines.
2) AC transmission lines require more conductor material than the DC transmission
lines as three-wire are required for AC transmission.
3) The effective resistance of the AC transmission line is higher than DC
transmission
line. It is because the skin effect takes place in AC transmission line.
4) An AC transmission line has line capacitance. Therefore, there is a continuous
power loss in the AC transmission line due to line charging current even when the
line is open.
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Advantages of DC Transmission
High-voltage direct current (HVDC) technology offers several advantages
compared to alternating current transmission systems. For example, it allows
more efficient bulk power transfer over long distances. However, cost is an
important variable in the equation. Once installed, HVDC transmission systems
are an integral part of the electrical power system, improving stability, reliability,
and transmission capacity.
Disadvantages of DC Transmission
1) Electric energy cannot be generated at
high (DC) voltage based on the
commutation problem.
2) The stepped-down process in the
electric power transmission system is a
vital
factor. However, we cannot step-up the rate of DC Voltage in high voltage
transmission since the transformer won’t operate on DC in this mode.
There are some limitations of DC circuit breakers and switches, such as they are
too expensive in DC appliances.
3) The motor-generator system should be employed to step down the rate of DC
voltage, and the efficiency of this system is lower than a common transformer.
DC transmission setup is more complex and expensive in comparison with the AC
transmission types.
4) The amplitude of DC voltage cannot be modified (step-down or step-up) simply,
such as in systems using transformers. Therefore, we cannot obtain the desired
voltage for electrical appliances (such as 5 Volts, 12 Volts, 15 Volts, 18 and 24
Volts, etc.) directly from the distribution and transmission lines.

Finally: conclusion
Edison is one of the greatest scientist in the world and he is the father of electricity and without the
DC there is no AC , but Tesla proved to us that AC is better than the DC in many different ways like
efficiency , power consumption and cost without both of them there will be no electricity right now
and maybe forever, so we should be thanks full for them and for this war which gave us advantages

REFERENCE:
1) Thomas Edison ( https://www.britannica.com/biography/Thomas-Edison )
2) Thomas Edison and the War of the Currents (https://daily.jstor.org/thomas-edison-
war-currents/)
3) Thomas Edison's D.C. Invention ( https://boundarystones.weta.org/2015/01/27/thomas-
edisons-dc-invention )
4) Thomas Edison Inventions(https://www.thomasedison.org/inventions)
5) Edison, Westinghouse and Tesla: the history behind The Current
War(https://www.historyextra.com/period/victorian/edison-westinghouse-tesla-real-
history-behind-the-current-war-film/ )
6) Nikola Tesla( https://www.britannica.com/biography/Nikola-Tesla )
7) Nikola Tesla and his Inventional Journey ( https://lsbc.lu/nikola-tesla-and-his-
inventional-journey/ )
8) Advantages and disadvantages of there transmission system
(https://www.tutorialspoint.com/what-are-the-advantages-anddisadvantages-of-dc-and-
actransmission#:~:text=Advantages%20of%20AC%20Transmission&text=The
%20AC%20voltage%20can%20be,distribute%20it%20at%20lower%20voltag es. )