George wrote:
Jon Danniken wrote:
bob haller wrote:
Edison believed DC was safer. Westinghouse was his BIG competitor.

When the country moved from hanging to electrocution for prisoners
sentenced to death........

Edison called it westinghousing them........

AC still won out as the power for the nation

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.

Jon

Edison and Tesla were inventors. Westinghouse was a con artist marketer
who porked Tesla.

DC makes a lot more sense in some cases. They just didn't have the
technology back then. Ask yourself why so many new high power/high
voltage long distance lines are DC.

My guess is by using DC you won't have inductive coupling
problems. The capacitive and inductive reactance would be
minimized and perhaps impedance wouldn't be a big problem.
You wouldn't have to worry about keeping the frequency of
the power supplied right on 50/60 hz. I'm no rocket surgeon
but there are things about AC power that can make it a pain
in the butt to deal with sometimes. I know that the magnetic
field of the Earth can induce current on long lines. Perhaps
a mad scientist or angry engineer could chime in and explain
it all.

TDD