Clash of the Titans - Edison V Tesla

Edison

Born in the small town of Milan, Ohio in 1847; Thomas Edison came into this world during a time of great tumult in American history. Although home-schooled from a young age he was fascinated by technology and would often engage in experiments.

At the age of 12, perhaps due to a bout of scarlet fever, he went completely deaf in one ear and partially deaf in another.

He started working on trains as a news butcher, selling newspapers, candy and vegetables. At the age of 15, he saved a boy named Jimmie from being struck by a runaway train. The three-year-old boy was the station agent’s son. The grateful station agent taught him how to use a telegraph.

In an American tradition pursued by many on the way to greatness, he set up a small newspaper called the Grand Trunk Herald. This venture fizzled out and he moved to Kentucky to work for Western Union. He worked the night shift which allowed him plenty of time to experiment during the day.

His first patent was for an Electric Vote Recorder. Seeing the condition of American voting even today, you can guess it was a grand failure. This prompted his move to New York. Working with another telegrapher, we designed his first successful product, the multiplex telegrapher. This device would allow more than one message to be sent simultaneously.

As the sales of the product started generating income he set up a small industrial lab at Menlo Park in 1876. Over the next decade, this became the source for many inventions that would flow out of America into the world including the telephone, the phonograph, the electric railway and the fabled electric bulb.

Once the electric bulb had been invented, he realised that he had to build a system for electricity distribution. A railway locomotive is not a great invention if the entire country is not crisscrossed by rail. Similarly, an electric bulb cannot be a great invention until everyone has access to electricity.

Tesla

Almost a decade after Edison, Nikola Tesla was born in the village of Smiljan in 1856; located in what was then the Austrian Empire, present-day Croatia. Coming from a family of Christian Orthodox priests he moved from town to town as his father was required to move from one church to another.

It was in school that he developed an interest in physics are seeing his teacher experiment.

He escaped conscription and went to study at a University in Graz, in the city which also gave us Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Initially, he excelled at the university and was top of the class but by the third year his interest had waned and he left the university without finishing the course. In 1881 he moved to Budapest and started working at a telegraph company. The next year he found work in Paris and moved there to work at the Continental Edison Company that was installing incandescent bulbs all over the city. His work was to supervise and troubleshoot issues.

His work was so good, that when his manager in Paris was asked to come back to the US in 1884, he insisted that Tesla travel with him to the US. He started working at the Edison Machine Works. Tesla was excellent at his work and was soon handed the project to develop an electric arc-lighting system.

Tesla was unhappy with the fact that certain bonuses that he had to be paid were not cleared and 6 months later he left the Edison Company.

He took the idea of developing the Arc lights and left to do it on his own. He met the same lawyers that Edison used for patenting through whom he was introduced to a couple of investors and incorporated his own company.

His product was patented and first installed in New Jersey. The product was much appreciated for its unique features.

The investors found that the lighting business was competitive and decided to turn to building a utility. Since Tesla had sold the patent to the company and awarded shares, he was left broke. He worked as a ditch digger for some time.

Through that, he met two Western Union superintendents who his idea for the induction motor that he was developing. The motor was designed to run on Alternating Current. They decided to back him and get the product patented.

The Rivalry

At the time almost all of the electricity being used in the world was DC based. Only street lighting used AC-based electricity. Thomas Edison believed that the high-voltage AC used in street lighting was unsafe and that the low-voltage DC was the right choice to make.

George Westinghouse had entered the business of power distribution in the 1880s. He started out with DC-based power stations but seeing the demand for arc-lighting shifted to building more AC-based power stations by the late 80s. It was at this time he met Tesla.

He decided to license the patents for the Induction motor and also hire Tesla to set up the AC distribution system which would compete directly with the power distribution company that Edison was building.

Tesla was handsomely paid for the consulting. The equivalent of $60,000 per month in today’s money. In addition to this, he was to receive royalty from his patent. He busied himself with working on the AC system.

In the meantime, Edison using the press and his fame launched a campaign against AC. He engaged in antics such as electrocuting a horse in public to show the dangers of AC as opposed to his DC system.

A third company Thomas Houston was also building AC distribution from Massachusetts.

In 1890, the Baring Bank was on the verge of bankruptcy in London. This set off a panic across the banking system in Europe and the US. All of the loans were being recalled by investors. Westinghouse was one of the companies that was hit. Under pressure, George Westinghouse approached Tesla and told him that there was no way for him to continue paying the royalties. He was offered the choice of writing off his patents or recovering his royalties from the bank that takes possession of the company. Tesla relinquished his rights to the patents.

In the meantime, Edison realised that he was on the wrong path and destined to fail. To rescue himself, with the backing of JP Morgan, he acquired Thomas-Houston which had an AC distribution system. The acquisition resulted in the company being rechristened General Electric.

Eventually, a cross-licensing agreement would be signed between Westinghouse and General Electric without which the race to distribute electricity threatened to become even more treacherous and expensive. Without Tesla’s patents, both companies would have struggled.

Edison continued to work for this company till his dying days. His neighbour at Fort Myers was Henry Ford. He died of diabetes.

Tesla continued to work on newer inventions and patent them. He had discovered X-rays in 1894 before Roentgen would be credited for it. His interests swayed towards the unseen. He created the first radio remote control and then became obsessed with the idea of transmitting electricity through air.

He lived till the ripe old age of 86 and died penniless at the Hotel New Yorker