Edison vs Tesla

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The War of Currents Electricity was introduced to New York in the late 1870s. Thomas Edison’s incandescent lamps created a great amount of demand for electricity. In this time, there was a DC power station in Manhattan. In the streets were single poles carrying dozen of crossbeams holding wire and exposed electrical wires. They were a constant hazard to the people in the streets. Nikola Tesla was an immigrant from Serbia; before he came to New York, he worked for a phone company in Budapest and later Paris; where the Continental Edison Company employed him. His supervisor wrote a letter of recommendation, which he took to Thomas Edison. He presented his plans of alternating current and an alternating current motor to Edison and Edison did not care about it. He, however, hired Tesla due to his intellect and offered him $50,000 if he succeeded in improving his DC generation plants. Tesla, after several months, announced he had completed the task and Edison claimed the $50,000 was a joke and “after he became a full-fledged American he would understand.” Tesla immediately quit. He eventually received an investment from Mr. A.K. Brown of the Western Union Company to invest in the AC motor. Clearly, the $50,000 is enough to create a conflict between the two. Nonetheless, there were a few other reasons Edison and Tesla clashed. Edison relied heavily on a try and fail method of continuous experimentation for his inventions. Tesla, however, had engineering training and wrote out his theories before testing them. Also, Tesla was a germaphobe and said Edison “lived in disregard of elementary rules of hygiene.” Tesla founded the Tesla Electric Light Company and developed several successful patents. He sold most of his patents to an inventor named George Westinghouse, who had also had a feud with Edison. Westinghouse eventually helped Tesla to create a power plant in

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