The Dirty Industrial Rivalry That Determined Whether America’s Electricity Would Be AC or DC

The Public Battle Between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse Cost the Lives of Both Line Workers and Animals

Before new forms of technology became a regular fact of American life, the mingling of public hopes and fears around these innovations was more obvious than it is today. By the 1880s, for example, people had become accustomed to gas-powered light, but electric lighting was still a novelty. Famed American inventor Thomas Edison built up his system for the distribution of electric power, but in 1886 he gained a formidable rival who threatened to bring his whole company down. George Westinghouse’s innovative and effective “alternating” or “pulsating” current, AC, was …