The First Casualty

11

Nikola Tesla was born in humble circumstances in Smiljan, Lika, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now Croatia, on July 10, 1856. His father, Milutin, was an Orthodox priest and his mother, Djuka Mandic, an inventor in her own right of household appliances. Young Nikola attended the Polytechnic Institute in Graz, Austria, and the University of Prague, where he became fascinated with electricity. He was working for a telephone company in Budapest when he conceived the idea of a rotary magnetic field, an idea that would play a significant role in his later life.

Having been employed by the Continental Edison Company in Paris, he emigrated to the United States in 1884 to work with the great American inventor. It was during this association that a divergence of opinion began. Edison had invested millions in producing direct current (DC). The alternating current (AC) invented by Tesla obviated the need for power stations every two miles. Alternating current, by its very nature, moves back and forth, needing little of the “boost” required by direct current.

Edison refused to pay the bonus he had promised should his young protégé be able to improve Edison’s system. Outraged, Tesla quit. Recognizing genius, George Westinghouse hired the young émigré and the “Battle of the Currents” was on.

Edison’s propaganda described direct current as flowing “smoothly, like a river while alternating current runs roughly like rapids,” although this simile’s influence on the public is unclear. To make his point, Edison even arranged the first execution by electricity, having the warden of a prison employ alternating current instead of hanging before a horrified press corps. The anticipated national revulsion against alternating current did not occur.

Propaganda or not, alternating current was selected to illuminate the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, and, subsequently, streets and homes across the country.

The battle was over.