#Tesla, #NikolaTesla, #Westinghouse
Almost immediately, George Westinghouse bought Tesla's patent rights to motors and transformers that used AC. Westinghouse offered Tesla a job in the Westinghouse laboratories as well as future royalties (a percentage of revenue or profits earned in the future) for the use of his ideas.
Westinghouse and his new employee launched a huge struggle with Edison over the issue of whether DC or AC would dominate. Eventually, alternating current won out, principally for two reasons: using alternating current, it was possible to send electric power over wires for many miles, whereas direct current could travel for only about two miles. Second, alternating current, unlike direct current, could be sent in a great concentration and then powered down at the far end.
Westinghouse and Edison fought bitterly over the issue of AC versus DC. Edison tried to convince government authorities that alternating current was dangerous and should be banned. (At one point, opponents of alternating current used a Westinghouse AC generator to electrocute a condemned prisoner in New York State to demonstrate its danger.) But the greater practicality of alternating current, especially the ability to distribute it over long distances from a centralized generator, became more important. AC remains the worldwide standard into the twenty-first century. The symbolic end of the struggle came in 1917, when Tesla won the highest honor awarded by the American Institute of Electric Engineers. Ironically, it is called the Edison Medal.