2023-12-19 00:00:00
1880. At the end of the century, nightlife is lit by candles and machines are activated by human power or steam. To shed light on this darkness, two visions will clash, those of Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla. Story of an electrical war.
Mr. thousand patents
October 22, 1879. Thomas Edison, a former modest newspaper delivery man who was hard of hearing, announced that he had developed the incandescent lamp. His work is in reality the perfecting of the invention of the British Joseph Swan. Electric bulbs, these glass bubbles emptied of air in which a filament burns, have actually existed since the beginning of the 19th century. However, we don’t like them, they are fragile and particularly ephemeral. This is the point that Thomas will improve. Before his personal eureka, he spent hours trying to find the material capable of producing more stable and continuous light. No less than three thousand elements are tested, from paper to tree bark and even a hair from his assistant’s beard. It is the carbonized cotton thread which will ultimately provide the best result: its bulb lasts more than 14 hours, a record. Aware of the small revolution he had just started, Edison hastened to protect his invention with a patent (he filed more than a thousand during his lifetime) and to promote it. On December 31, 1879, he organized a public demonstration and hundreds of people flocked to visit this laboratory, entirely illuminated by electricity. For the crowd, Edison becomes much more than an inventor, he is a real wizard!
Alternative vs continuous
To industrialize and improve the electricity network alongside Edison, Nikola Tesla, a young Serbian-American engineer, sets sail for New York. But the collaboration between the two men goes badly. Edison swears by the direct current system. Reliable and capable of supplying densely populated areas, this technique can nevertheless only transport electricity over short distances and requires the installation of small coal-fired power plants in city centers. Tesla advocates alternating current, less expensive and capable of providing electricity over long distances. After breaking with Edison, Nikola partnered with entrepreneur George Westinghouse, who shared his views. To Edison’s great dismay, despite its international fame, alternating current seemed to gain favor from his fellow citizens. “We should not believe that people in the 19th century were not sensitive to pollution,” explains historian Alain Beltran on Radio France. “Coal pollutes, releases dust, there are sometimes explosions.”
Supercharged war
Then begins a real war between the two camps. Edison stopped at nothing and used the press to instil doubt in the minds of now enlightened Americans: he asserted, alternating current could prove dangerously deadly. To argue his point, he organized experiments, open to the public, during which animals were electrocuted with alternating current. “But a macabre climax was reached when Thomas Edison, desperate for his technology to prevail, secretly financed the invention and construction of the first electric chair by ensuring that it worked with alternating current,” reports National Geographic. On August 6, 1890, William Kemmler was the first to die by electrocution. The execution fails and those present are horrified to see the condemned man’s flesh burning before their eyes.
Victory without winner
Despite this smear campaign, Tesla resists and responds with incredible demonstrations where he manages to light up light bulbs simply by touching them (thanks to the electricity passing through his body). “Above all, Tesla will develop increasingly sophisticated engines,” continues Alain Beltran. “And we realize that when we have to raise or lower the voltage to make electricity travel, it is much easier with alternating than with direct.” This war of currents ended in 1896 when a large power station was built on Niagara Falls to supply New York with… alternating current.
If he wins the game, Nikola Tesla will never benefit from this success. “A brilliant inventor, but a poor entrepreneur, he died alone and ruined in 1943, after leaving dozens of patents that he did not commercialize himself.” Edison, for his part, patented 1,093 inventions in total. He died on October 18, 1931, still at the height of fame. Three days after his death, in honor of him, the United States will plunge into darkness for one minute.
This article appeared in Le Télépro on 14/12/2023
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