Alternating Current

A person can walk down the street and pick any person they see to ask who was the father of invention and their answer would be Thomas Edison. There were two brilliant inventors in the late 19th century responsible for some of the modern conveniences of today, Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla. Edison perfected the incandescent light bulbs and devised a system of electrical current for homes and businesses. Tesla’s biggest innovation was introducing alternating current as the standard for modern electric power, breaking Edison’s monopoly on direct current power. Inventors Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla were opposite sides of the same coin. Edison, a brilliant business man with no formal education and Tesla, a scientist and scholar, had two completely different approaches in the way they worked. Edison believed that inventions are made to make money, while Tesla thought only of physics and mathematics. Edison, the business man, hired only the brightest people to work with him on his different money making inventions, one of those brilliant minds was Tesla. Tesla came to America in 1884 to meet Edison. He was so impressed with Tesla he hired him on the spot. Edison approached Tesla with a bonus cash offer for any improvements Tesla could make on his Direct Current motor.
Tesla told Edison about his own idea for his Alternating Current motor. Edison disregarded his idea, calling it unrealistic, a decision he would later regret. Tesla worked for Edison for about a year making improvements on the Direct Current motor and when it came time to pay Tesla the promised bonus, Edison refused telling Tesla it was a joke and he just didn’t understand American humor. Tesla quit working for Edison and accused him of being a thief. Tesla found other work to pay for his experiments. In 1888, Tesla devised a better system of transmission, the Alternating Current system used in houses around the world