In the last decades of the 19th
Century, inventors
and industrialists
battled for dominance in the emerging market of electric energy.
One of the major fronts of this conflict was the choice of DC (direct
current) or AC
(alternating current). Jill Jonnes
explains the history
of this pioneering age of electricity in Empires
of Light.
Thomas
Edison was a major player in the early days of electrification. He is known
for developing a commercially viable incandescent
light. The innovation
that made his light commercially successful was that he developed an entire
system for generating a distributing electric energy to make those lights work.
Edison designed a DC system, and he was a major proponent of DC. A
weakness of his system was distance. He could only supply power over a distance
of about a mile. If large areas were to be lit, a power station would be needed
every mile. This made it hard for Edison to market the system for community
lighting, though he successfully sold many systems to manufacturers,
commercial establishments and very wealthy homeowners. In spite of the
limitations, he built a system to light a portion of Manhattan; his
Pearl Street station began powering lights in 1882.
Though it was not obvious at first, it soon became clear that high
voltage AC could be transmitted over very great distances. The invention of
transformers in Europe
provided a way for voltage to be stepped up for transmission and stepped back
down to levels appropriate for lighting.
George
Westinghouse adopted the AC system. The advantages of AC soon make
Westinghouse Electric Company a major competitor with Edison. Even Edison’s own
salesman began to ask for an AC system to sell, though he was reluctant to have
any involvement with AC.
Edison believed that AC and the high voltage used for its transmission
were dangerous. He also had business and personal reasons to oppose the
introduction of rival systems. He attacked the use of AC. He even went so far
as to aid an AC opponent who successfully lobbied to make electrocution by AC
power the official means of executing condemned prisoners in the state of New York.
Westinghouse pressed on and won high profile contracts that proved the
safety and efficiency of his AC equipment. Notably, he had the major lighting
contract for the White City of
Chicago’s
World Columbian Exposition of 1893. He also won
the contract to build generators for the hydropower plant at Niagara Falls.
The promise of inexpensive power drew major manufacturers to the area before
the plant starting operating in 1895. This
surprised the investors, who had though the city of Buffalo would be
the target market.
Though transformers made AC a very viable system, it had other
technological hurdles, such as difficulty powering motors. Serbian-born inventor Nikola Tesla
solved this problem with his induction motor. Like Edison, Tesla invented an
entire system for supplying electrical power to his motors, which could also
easily accommodate incandescent and arc lighting. The Niagara Falls system was
based on Tesla’s patented technology.
Tesla went on to invent and explore the potential of other electrical
devices, notably fluorescent lights and radios.
Unfortunately, he was never able to create commercial products from these later
works. He fell on hard times and was quite poor for many of the last years of
his life. He died in 1943.
After the formation of General
Electric, which largely pushed him out of the management
of the company, Thomas Edison moved on to other things. His later ventures were
of mixed success, but his work on the phonograph
and improvements to motion
picture helped to launch the American entertainment
industry. Edison passed away in 1931, semi-retired
in Florida.
Westinghouse continued to grow his electrical empire. After the Panic
of 1907, in
which a banking crisis shook the economy,
investors forced him out of the management of Westinghouse Electric. He had
four other companies to run. He didn’t care for the way Wall Street
did business
so he got involved in Progressive politics.
He died in 1914.
Jonnes includes a chapter that is a very good, brief introduction to
the history of electrical science.
She describes the discoveries of William
Gilbert, Stephen
Gray, Andreas
Cuneus, Benjamin
Franklin, Alessandro
Volta, Sir
Humphrey Davy, Hans
Christian Oersted, André Marie Ampère, Zénobe-Théophie Gramme and Michael
Faraday.
If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
Jonnes, Jill. Empires of Light:
Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World. New York:
Random House,
2003.
