Saturday, September 23, 2006

Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison and the Electric Chair

Thanks to Boing Boing for bringing the Nikola Tesla monument to my attention. (There's a better picture of the monument on Flickr courtesy of Simple Simon). The monument shows Tesla standing on top of an AC motor - one of his great inventions.

Seeing it reminds me about the "War of Currents" fought between George Westinghouse, who was promoting Telsa's AC, and Thomas Edison, who owned the then dominant DC technology. In one skirmish, Edison tried establish the term "to Westinghouse" to describe the practice of execution by (AC) electric chair.

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