Great Documentaries's video: Westinghouse - Chapter 16 - Battle of the Currents

One writer said, "The invention of alternating-current motors and the system for operating them was one of the greatest advances ever made in the industrial application of electricity." Not everyone agreed. There was serious opposition to AC power. Assertions were made that the alternating-current system was dangerous and that its use should not be permitted commercially. Numerous articles appeared throughout the country designed to prejudice public opinion against the system. One bitter article from a scientist read, "There is no plea which will justify the use of high alternating current either in a scientific or commercial sense, and my personal desire would be to prohibit entirely the use of alternating current." If anything was needed to urge Westinghouse to greater effort, this antagonism served the purpose. (REIS) If we look at a comparison of Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse, we find a number of major differences. They had quite a difference in personalities. An example during the great Battle of the Currents is Thomas Edison backed the electric chair, not as a humane way to eliminate convicted criminals, but as a way to get a competitive advantage over his competitor, George Westinghouse's alternating current. Thomas Edison was trying to discredit Westinghouse's alternating current. He had a campaign to make it look much more dangerous than it really was. Although it was dangerous, and, obviously, to this very day, we know it can kill people. But George Westinghouse believed electricity was there to benefit mankind and should not be started off by executing condemned criminals. Thomas Edison pushed that in the state of New York and recommended the electric chair as a humane way to execute condemned criminals and, by the way, said you'd have to use Westinghouse's alternating current. Direct current just wouldn't do it. Now, that wasn't exactly true, but that's the position that he pushed. So George Westinghouse was appalled that Thomas Edison would lower himself to that level of competition. When the electric chair was first proposed, there was no term "electrocution" in existence at the time. Thomas Edison even lowered himself to the point where he suggested that the term to be used would be called "Westinghoused." So you Westinghoused a condemned criminal, later to be called "electrocute" a condemned criminal. So he'd lower himself pretty low at the point of how he was willing to compete. (NARRATOR) Edison's connections with the media and politicians worked overtime for him, spinning the evils of alternating-current power. It was said that Thomas Edison went so far as to work with a man who electrocuted dogs and cats on stage to give AC power a bad name. Moving footage exists of an elephant being electrocuted in front of a crowd. Although it is claimed to be Edison's work, the film clip is generally accepted not to be part of the Battle of the Currents. However, it gives an idea of the gruesome, inhumane acts that those men did in order to prove their point about the dangers of alternating current. (SUTHERLAND) Westinghouse came in with a system of alternating current that immediately made the Edison direct-current equipment obsolete. And since Edison had provided direct-current equipment to a lot of small, municipal power companies and light companies, they didn't have money. They didn't have any capital. So he had taken paper. He owned large shares in those municipal companies. He knew that if Westinghouse was successful in replacing all of his direct-current equipment that was installed he would be financially hurt, so that's why he was so anxious to do everything he could to make George Westinghouse's alternating-current system a bad word.