Edison vs Tesla
Edison, a vicious fighter and a force of nature, was not going to just roll-over. He and Tesla went toe-to-toe for New York’s lucrative lighting contracts in a period known as the battle of the currents. With his powerful influence, Edison used marketing and financial tricks to highlight every fire and every accident that came out of Tesla’s system. Some of the darkest chapters of the battle of the currents include demonstrations made by Harold Brown (one of Edison’s electrical engineers) in which he publicly electrocuted stray dogs with both AC and DC—in an attempt to prove that AC was more dangerous, because it killed them more quickly. His animal experiments later moved to larger animals; a calf and even a horse. They wanted people to associate AC systems with death; even convincing politicians to adopt this method for the death sentence, marketing it as being “Wesntinhoused”. William Kemler, a 45-year old man on death row for murdering his wife, was the first person executed by electric chair at precisely 6:32 am on August 6th 1890. This marked the lowest point in the battle of the currents. Tesla knew that to beat someone like Edison (who had legitimate albeit malicious claims), he had to take the claims seriously and dispute them decisively; perhaps with comparable sensationalism. His most daring demonstration, and the moment that sealed the fate of the battle of the currents, happened on May 20th, in 1891. Tesla stood next to one of his high frequency AC coils and allowed rays of electricity to pass through his body (with no metal mesh protecting him) to light a lightbulb he was holding.
Source: Jim Al-Khalili, "The Age of Invention," Shock and Awe: The Story of Electricity, episode 2, BBC, 2011
Image from the Public Domain, Restored by Bammesk under CC BY 4.0 license
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Full disclosure, I may occasionally borrow a sentence from Will Durant's Story of Civilization. I absolutely love that collection!