In article , "Jon Danniken" wrote:

Edison was a hack. Westinghouse had the induction and polyphase generation
patents from Nikola Tesla in his pocket, which established a superior system
of electrical power generation and distribution, which we are still using to
this day.

The superiority of AC over DC for power transmission is due solely to these
two facts:
a) the higher the voltage, the lower the losses in transmission.
b) AC can drive a transformer, but DC cannot.

Thus, it's possible to step AC voltage up arbitrarily high for transmission to
minimize losses, then step it back down for distribution. This can't be done
with DC.