DC battle, it looks like the two currents will end up working parallel to each other in a sort of hybrid armistice. Note: This post originally appeared as part of our Edison vs. Tesla series in November, DC Power. But there was one problem.
Direct current is not easily converted to higher or lower voltages. Westinghouse also received an important contract to construct the AC generators for a hydro-electric power plant at Niagara Falls; in , the plant started delivering electricity all the way to Buffalo, New York, 26 miles away. The achievement was regarded as the unofficial end to the War of the Currents, and AC became dominant in the electric power industry.
But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Twice a week we compile our most fascinating features and deliver them straight to you. However, with a phone, AC current flows to your house, which then charges your phone that has a battery running on DC. This is the same with laptops, which is why they have a brick between the wall and the computer - the power needs to be converted to DC for the internal battery. AC Sine Wave Voltage. Image Credit: Sparkfun. DC Voltage.
The big turning point for DC power was in the s when semiconductor electronics were invented. Additionally, DC current is required for many electronics; according to Sciencing. Some of these devices also contain hard drives, powered by motors which, you guessed it, require DC.
With the surge of electronics that has continued since: personal computers, cell phones, smart TVs, electric cars, and a whole lot more, DC is back with a vengeance and being used everywhere. A short side note about sending power over long distances. However, increased cost and decreased reliability means AC lines are still much more common.
Tesla on a v charger. That was until a brilliant Serbian mathematician, engineer and visionary came along. Nikola Tesla, having travelled to America in with just four cents in his pocket, started out working at Edison Machine Works improving DC generators.
He proved good at it, once staying up all night to repair the dynamos on the ocean liner SS Oregon. Like Edison, he worked long hours, slept little and had an unquenchable drive to innovate. Tesla had the ideas, but not the capital and business knowhow. A Pittsburgh industrialist named George Westinghouse had both. Unlike his competitor Edison, who enjoyed his celebrity, Westinghouse kept himself private and did not like having his photograph taken. The two men wanted the same thing — to control power distribution — but they had very different ways of achieving it.
Edison: Thomas Edison achieved worldwide fame in for his phonograph. He worked on the sound recording device, among other things, at the industrial research laboratory he set up — the first of its kind — at Menlo Park. Westinghouse: After serving in the American Civil War, George Westinghouse made his fortune after inventing an air brake to greatly improve safety on the burgeoning railroads.
The industrialist then established a company to ensure the adoption of his brake and signalling innovations. Edison: Direct Current DC The electrical charge flows in a single direction at a constant voltage or current, as seen in a battery.
If plotted on a graph, AC looks like a wave of peaks and troughs. Edison: As Edison got there first, DC stations had become the standard he even developed a meter so customers could be billed according to consumption.
DC energy could be stored as back-up and flowed at lower, safer voltages. Westinghouse: Crucially, AC could be transmitted over long distances without much loss.
This meant that fewer power stations were needed than with DC, and they could cover more remote regions. It was easier and cheaper to generate too.
Edison: DC had a small transmission range before losing significant amounts of energy. Power stations had to be within a mile of their customers — so were only cost-efficient in towns and cities — and required heavier, more expensive copper wiring. Westinghouse: Transmitting AC over long distances meant stepping it up, using a transformer, to very high voltages. This meant that poorly insulated wires were extremely hazardous.
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