Tesla’s New Current
All ran smoothly as Thomas Edison helped to power the nation of America, until a young Serbian scientist came along. Nikola Tesla challenged Edison’s version of power and tried to convince the public there was an easier, cheaper way. That began the War of Currents in the late 1880s. Tesla proposed a new Alternating current, and Edison stuck to Direct Current. Each form of power had its pros and cons. Not one power was better or more thought out, but each reigned in their own capacity. Edison’s power degraded, and AC took over powering cities to states. Eventually, Tesla’s Alternating Current power won popularity by its design, efficiency, and easy acceptance among cites.
To begin, in simple terms, Alternating Current, also known as AC, is exactly what it implies: current that moves back and forth
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Once the people could see the electricity in action, more cities started to win over to AC. For example, in 1893, the Niagara fall Power Company was one the first major users of Tesla’s AC power (Lantero). Additionally, The Chicago World’s Fair picked AC over Edison’s power. These huge corporations provided a vast jumpstart for publicity and acceptance among other major cities. For instance, when a steam driven electric plant became too expensive for William Whitner, “he conceived the idea of generating Alternating Current electricity using turbulent river water” (Tabler). Whitner went to study under Tesla to get his experimental power source running and “in 1894 Anderson, South Carolina was the first city in the United States to have a continuous supply of electric power,” because of AC (Tabler). Anderson was rightly dubbed The Electric City, and Whiter became the founder of one of the biggest power stations in the country: Duke Energy. Ultimately, after acceptance and encouragement from major companies and cities, AC went on to power more of the