AC/DC: The Savage Tale of the First Standards War

by Tom McNichol, Malcolm Hillgartner (Narrated by)

Overview

Long before there was VHS versus Betamax, Windows versus Macintosh, or Blu-Ray versus HD-DVD, the first and nastiest standards war was fought over how electricity would be transmitted around the world: alternating current (AC) and direct current (DC). The savage showdown between AC and DC changed the lives of billions of people, shaped the modern technological age, and set the stage for all standards wars to follow. AC/DC tells the little-known story of how Thomas Edison bet wrong in that war, eventually losing control over the "operating system" for his future inventions—not to mention the company he founded, which would later become General Electric.Today's Digital Age wizards can take lessons from Edison's fierce battle: control an invention's technical standard and you control the market.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781433244759
Publisher:	Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication date:	05/01/2008
Edition description:	Unabridged

About the Author

Tom McNichol is a contributing editor to Wired magazine, a highly regarded writer on technology and business, and a regular contributor to the New York Times and Washington Post. He has recorded segments for the public radio shows Marketplace and All Things Considered.

Malcolm Hillgartner is an actor, author, songwriter, and playwright. He and his wife, Jahnna Beecham, have written more than 100 books for teens and young readers under the name Jahnna N. Malcolm, including the best-selling series The Jewel Kingdom.

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Table of Contents

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

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"You'll never look at your wall socket the same again."
—Evan Ratliff, coauthor, Safe: The Race to Protect Ourselves in a Newly Dangerous World

"From the twisted copper wires of electricity's early years McNichol spins a story buzzing with genius and fraud, ambition and infamy, hilarity and humiliation. It's a joy to read: a comic operetta of American industrial history, full of great men, small minds and an alarming number of dead dogs."
—Craig Stoltz, health editor, Washington Post

"Few writers explain technology as well as Tom McNichol. No one's as good at finding the humor in it."
—Jeffrey O'Brien, senior editor, Wired magazine

"A fascinating history of the battle that decided what comes through the wires when we flick a switch. A great story of how far people will go to prove they're 'right' – and make a buck."
—J. J. Yore, executive producer, public radio's Marketplace

"A tale of astonishing genius and greed, a perfect reflection of the competing forces that built corporate America. McNichol offers us a ringside seat at the birth of a superpower, and it's a bloody, messy, and altogether fascinating spectacle."
—Brooke Gladstone, cohost, NPR's On the Media

Editorial Reviews

A little more than 100 years ago, two titans of industry faced off in one of the most vicious battles the marketplace had ever seen. On one side, Thomas Edison, inventor extraordinaire, the creator of the phonograph and the electric light; on the other, George Westinghouse, tycoon and titan, backing the mysterious eastern European inventor Nikola Tesla. They fought over the very nature of the electrical system in America: would it be built on alternating current (as Westinghouse proposed), or direct currentà la Edison- Though a battle over electrical standards sounds dry, this tale is anything but. McNichol's solid if brief survey of this relatively unknown moment in the history of technology ranges from macabre electrocutions of hapless animals (and eventually prison inmates) as demonstrations of the "Death Current" to the gleaming "electrical wonderland" of the 1893 World's Columbian Exhibition in Chicago. Though the author focuses on when it's wise to fight a standards battle and when to give in, some might wish that he had another 200 pages in which to flesh out the story. His book tantalizingly scratches the surface of Edison's ingenuity and force of will, Westinghouse's shrewd business sense, and most of all the sheer eccentricity of Nikola Tesla.(Sept.) (Publishers Weekly, July 17, 2006)

From the Publisher