The fact that Edison later adopted the AC system is testament that he was lying or, at least, exaggerating the dangers in order to discredit his opponent.
It is much easier to kill someone with AC than DC because the device that allowed the AC transmission over very long distances (the tesla coil) allows you to jack up Voltage to very high degrees, with less current than DC. The reason he eventually adopted the AC system was because no one was buying the DC power. It was too fincky, required a power station every couple of miles (which is what Edison was shooting for) and the equipment had too many problems. He just had to admit defeat and that is what made him a life long enemy of Tesla.

Edison took other people's ideas, worked upon them and then claimed them as his own "inventions".
It was more than that. If he just stole ideas, he would have been put out of business very quickly. His Menlo Park Research was structured such that if you worked for him, all of your ideas were his. You signed on to do the research and everything you invented then became his property. He would then file the patent in his name. His is the business model that the majority of research centers (including here where I work) base thier business model on. If you use this campus to do research, then everything you do becomes property of the regents and they have the legal authority to dispose of said research as they see fit. Usually it is a 50 percent to the school, and then another 10%-20% to pay for supplies and salaries. So the person doing the inventing gets about 25% or less of the money on thier work.

As soon as Tesla refused to co-operate with the government, he was branded as a "mad scientist", yet the day after his death all of his research was confascated and has never been returned or accounted for. His inventions, however, have slowly been introduced as "new ideas" by both military and commercial interests.
He was alway considered 'eccentric' from the beginning, because he was so far ahead of his time. Plus some of his "personal habits" tended to put people off , one was his fondness in caring for New Yorks 'rats with wings', aka Pigeons. He would feed and encourage them to the dismay of many people. The funny thing is he did present the military with many new ideas, which they scoffed at, for example the use of three discrete frequencies to remotely control machinary. It used three signals, each a unique frequency, which would combine again in the control unit to produce an out put. Sound famliar; three inputs to get one output? Yup, he had the first original AND gate. But the amazing thing was he demonstrated a working model at the 1893 worlds fair. The U.S. Navy could have had remote control, guided torpedos for the Spanish American war. They turned it all down. Too new, too far ahead of his time.

Even today some of his inventions are so far ahead of thier time it isn't funny. He designed and built a bladeless turbine that could hit such speeds that the materails of the time would simply melt and disintegrate from the friction of the air.

Last Edited By: Padre Mellyrn Jun 29 08 10:46 AM. Edited 1 times.