War of Currents

Today I will talk about a very strange battle : The Currents Battle. Do you know about Nikola Tesla? Maybe some of you who interested in physics know just a unit of magnetic flux density that named Tesla. But this person is more special than you know. He is a man that had forgotten by history. We call him a genius of electric. I talk with such praising, but as I see you don’t know what about I am talking.

So let’s start a story. You know Thomas Edison. He is an inventor of light bulb. Also he is a designer of Direct Current. Direct Current is a current that we use in batteries. These are great inventions!

But what about Nikola Tesla? Why this person is such special. This person is one of my favorite scientist. He is not an inventor of Alternating Current. Most people know him as an inventor of AC but it is not true. He was just working on this system and fixing problems on it. Also he made machines that works with AC. He was professional at AC but not an inventor of it.

Edison, as an inventor of light bulb, was so famous in physics in 19^th century. And Tesla’s chance was little against him. But Tesla had won this battle, he rescued us from a big problem. If we would use DC instead of AC, our cities would look like this: electric wires are everywhere.

Let’s talk about how this story happen. Tesla invented many machines and he started going forward with them. He started proofing his AC. Edison saw and annoyed form it. If Tesla did a proof of his AC, Edison’s system would be down. That’s why Edison built sly plans.

He wanted show AC as a dangerous invention. In 1890 he executed 2 criminal persons with electric chair which uses AC. This was not end, he also killed cats dogs and cows for show AC as dangerous plan. It was not enough for Edison, of course. He needed a big victim: An elephant! After it he executed one elephant which name is Topsy because of elephant killed 3 person in circus.

But Tesla did not give up.  In 1893, for Christopher Columbus 400^th year anniversary, America organized Chicago World Fair. For light up square, there were two variants: AC or DC. Edison and Tesla started a competition for getting this project. Edison wanted 1 million dollar for realize project, but Tesla wanted 400 000 dollar. It is not greed of Edison. The reason of high price is that Edison needed many wires for project. With this big difference Tesla get this project. He had a big opportunity. And he used it well. At Fair, when lights turn on at night, 27 million people was watching these awesome scenery. Tesla also won War of Currents, with a big difference!