One account claims Edison opposed AC thinking that AC wouldn't work or wouldn't work as well as DC in his incandescent bulb.
At low enough frequencies, maybe < 10 Hz, radiation heat transfer is fast enough so that the filiamet spends some time outside the visible light range reducing the efficiency somewhat. Flicker is irritating and might have been another low frequency concern.
The story is hard to believe when it would be so easy to try AC out at various frequencies and compare it with DC.
Edison was notorious for discovering everything experimentally, not theoritically, so it isn't like Edison wouldn't have tried.
Supposedly Newton screwed up on his steam jet carriage when a few minutes of calculations based on his own laws would have predicted it wouldn't have the propulsion efficiency. The only explanation is Newton knew in advance it wouldn't have enough thrust but got a defense contract or something.
Maybe Edison just opposed anything the theoritician Tesla supported. Supposedly the hatred between the two inventors was as spiteful as anything you see here on newsgroups, Edison asking Tesla about Serbs eating human flesh and Tesla claiming Edison never took a bath.
"Tesla came over from Graz and went to work for Thomas Edison [in 1884]. Edison couldn't stand Tesla for several reasons. One was that Tesla showed up for work every day in formal dress - morning coat, spats, top hat and gloves - and this just wasn't the American Way at the time. Edison also hated Tesla because Tesla invented so many things while wearing these clothes." -Laurie Anderson, "Dance of Electricity".
The clash between the 2 was inevitable given the psychology. Both Tesla and Edison were what later psychologists would classify as "extroverted thinking" (ET) types. Such personalities are attracted to careers in physics and engineering or similar. In typical cases ET's suffer a creativity block after age 35 or so and tend to take their frustrations out on those of lower status. Physics professors shouting abuse at junior colleagues or students for trivial mistakes is characteristic. Older ET's are conservative and not open to new ideas and particularly don't like concepts they didn't author themselves.
The relative ages at the time Tesla (b 1856) came to work for Edison (b 1847) might indicate their positions with respect to the "developed" DC technology versus an unproven AC power system. Edison was 38 at the time he asked Tesla to improve his DC dynamo.
From various sources (see the man at Google):
In the distribution of electricity, alternating current has distinct advantages over direct current. Levels of voltage and current can be readily transformed with AC, allowing distribution of power over distances of hundreds of miles. DC power, on the other hand, is difficult to distribute in usable levels more than two miles between generator and user.
This was already well-known in the 1880s. Direct current, however, was still the predominant type of power being installed at the time. The reason, simply put, was that nobody had yet figured out how to build reliable AC motors and equipment. AC devices in use at the time used "commutators" - mechanical current-switchers - to operate, and frequently failed due to heat, vibration, and an excess of moving parts.
Some scientists and inventors had been trying for years to find solutions to these problems. Other inventors and financiers, who had invested in DC power systems, weren't interested in solutions. DC power was firmly under their financial control, and they saw anything that challenged DC not as an improvement, but as a threat.
Thomas Alva Edison did not fully understand the light bulbs that he himself had invented. Though the carbon filaments would work from AC or DC current equally well, Edison himself believed his electric lights would only work with DC. It was to be years before he learned of his error. In any event, when Tesla first arrived in America in 1884, Edison had a large vested interest - both financial and emotional - in the DC power plants which he had been building, and which the "robber baron" J. Pierpont Morgan had been financing.
When Tesla arrived in the United States and sought Edison's backing for his new AC devices, therefore, Edison refused to listen.
"Hold up! Spare me that nonsense. It's dangerous. We're set up for direct current in America. People like it, and it's all I'll ever fool with."
Edison promised Tesla $50k to ruggedise Edison's DC generators. When Tesla solved some technical problems and asked for payment, Edison apparently told Tesla he did not understand the American sense of humor and paid him nothing. Tesla was then out of a job but later went to work for rival Westinghouse.
Subsuently Edison was known to demonstrate the "evil" new AC system by publicly executing dogs. Taking one of the frightened pets stolen from the streets of West Orange, Edison would place it on a sheet of metal, bring forth two wires attached to an AC generator, and announce to spectators, "Ladies and gentlemen, I shall now demonstrate the effects of AC current on this dog."
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R Kym Horsell
If your ideas are any good you'll have to ram them down people's throats.
-- Howard Aiken
Edison was probably a real asshole from the looks of things. His anti-smoking campaign that included cigarettes in his factory but not his cigars. His propaganda on the worthlessness of platinum (when he discovered he needed it for his light bulbs and found what it cost). His well known anti AC campaign which included electrocuting an elephant as a demonstration on the dangerous nature of AC, versus DC.
Not to belittle his achievements; but there could be only one planet in his orbit.
I visited his NJ factory and house. They showed his working library with his notes in various books - and rude comments about the veracity, lineage, and competence of the authors. His house had another library of unread books just for show (apparently that had snob appeal in his era) You knew you had "arrived" when you could afford to own all the classics. Unread- because the pages weren't separated - still uncut. The factory had a large motor or generator on display with long magnets, and actual brushes (like millions of fine copper wires clamped in a holder). He had one early Otis Safety Elevator in the factory/lab.
Definitely worth the price of admission if you are in the West Orange, New Jersey, area. (Yonkers NY was close enough to make it worth my while).
The independent nature of creative thinking may make it difficult to be thoughtful about the needs of others.
You don't see a whole lot of want ads for "prima donna care providers."
Edison wintered in Ft. Myers, FL, and his lab there is now a museum. USF may have opened a branch campus there under the Chiles Administration on or near Edison Community College.
Yeah but... Tesla managed to stay a pauper in spite of inventing the things that made Edison Marconi Westinghouse and others very wealthy, so it isn't creativity per se.
Payday loans, rent to own schemes, televangelists, lotteries, etc. are perfect examples, where marketing and manipulation are big business and the poor are their biggest customers.
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Shit! I thought no one knew, goddammit!
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Lessons!
The cost of hamburger meat and macaroni is higher in lower income neighbourhoods. Their rents are higher per capita income. Traffic fines and court penalties are also disproportionate between the classes.
Interesting. I think nearly everyone means monetary wealth when they differentiate rich and poor.
We sell people on what they "need" often not making a distinction on need and want. Marketing manipulation is very successful in the developed world and is being exported to the developing world.
Some folks are able to possess a lot and still feel poor. We are taught from birth that money buys happiness, and that idea is continually reinforced. We begin to see our own importance in terms of relative monetary wealth or the acquisition of conspicuous "things."
The goal in life is happiness and satisfaction; everything else is secondary, but you'd never guess it listening to the marketeers, politicos, or religions of the world. Wealth and power - theirs not yours.
The fact that Jerry Springer, Sarah Palin, Glen Beck and a host of others draw so large a following, suggests that scads of people are unable or unwilling to do their own thinking. That should give one pause.
Maybe humans are so flawed they can never reach the potential they seem capable of. For every Leonardo - there are far too many "Springers."
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