AC/DC

AC/DC tells the little-known story of how Thomas Edison
wrongly bet in the fierce war between supporters of alternating
current and direct current. The savagery of this electrical battle
can hardly be imagined today. The showdown between AC and DC began
as a rather straightforward conflict between technical standards, a
battle of competing methods to deliver essentially the same
product, electricity. But the skirmish soon metastasized into
something bigger and darker. In the AC/DC battle, the worst aspects
of human nature somehow got caught up in the wires; a silent,
deadly flow of arrogance, vanity, and cruelty. Following the path
of least resistance, the war of currents soon settled around that
most primal of human emotions: fear. AC/DC serves as an
object lesson in bad business strategy and poor decision making.
Edison's inability to see his mistake was a key factor in his loss
of control over the ?operating system? for his future
inventions?not to mention the company he founded, General Electric.

Autorentext
TOM MCNICHOL is a contributing editor for Wired magazine. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Salon, the Washington Post, and the Guardian. His radio commentaries and satires have aired on NPR's All Things Considered, Morning Edition, and Marketplace. He's the author of Barking at Prozac (Crown Publishing, 1997), and his work appears in the anthology Afterwords: Stories and Reports from 9/11 and Beyond (Washington Square Press, 2002).

Zusammenfassung
AC/DC tells the little-known story of how Thomas Edison wrongly bet in the fierce war between supporters of alternating current and direct current. The savagery of this electrical battle can hardly be imagined today. The showdown between AC and DC began as a rather straightforward conflict between technical standards, a battle of competing methods to deliver essentially the same product, electricity. But the skirmish soon metastasized into something bigger and darker. In the AC/DC battle, the worst aspects of human nature somehow got caught up in the wires; a silent, deadly flow of arrogance, vanity, and cruelty. Following the path of least resistance, the war of currents soon settled around that most primal of human emotions: fear. AC/DC serves as an object lesson in bad business strategy and poor decision making. Edison's inability to see his mistake was a key factor in his loss of control over the ?operating system? for his future inventions?not to mention the company he founded, General Electric.

Inhalt
Prologue Negative and Positive 1 1 First Sparks 5 2 Lightning in a Bottle 13 3 Enter the Wizard 25 4 Let There Be Light 41 5 Electrifying the Big Apple 55 6 Tesla 69 7 The Animal Experiments 87 8 Old Sparky 107 9 Pulse of the World 129 10 Killing an Elephant 143 11 Twilight by Battery Power 155 12 DC's Revenge 173 Epilogue Standards Wars: Past, Present, and Future 181 Further Readings in Electricity 187 The Author 191 Index 193

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