On Nikola Tesla's 169th birth anniversary, why his rivalry with Thomas Edison is still electrifying

Indian Express

10-07-2025

Today marks the 169th anniversary of the birth of Nikola Tesla, the Serbian-American inventor whose name is now synonymous with innovation, electricity and one of the most iconic rivalries in science.
His opponent?
Thomas Edison, the self-taught American credited with inventing the light bulb and launching the modern electrical age. The tension between the two inventors would erupt into a dramatic feud known as the War of the Currents.
'Well known as a competitor of arch rival Thomas Edison,' Tesla's struggle was both personal and industrial, Marc J. Seifer notes in Transcending the Speed of Light.
The late 1870s saw electricity transform New York City, with Edison's incandescent light bulb sparking a frenzy for electric power. His direct current (DC) power station on Pearl Street in lower Manhattan held a near-monopoly, backed by the powerful banker J P Morgan. However, it was also dangerous. Streets were littered with poles and sagging wires which children died from climbing. In Brooklyn, the threat of electric shocks was so routine that the local baseball team was nicknamed the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Over and above safety concerns, DC had a fatal flaw: it couldn't travel far without losing energy. 'If we were living in Edison's world, we'd have a large coal-operated generating plant every mile or two, because DC couldn't travel any distance,' writes Jill Jonnes in Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World. 'The brilliance of AC was that you could send it long distances, bring the voltage down via another transformer station, and distribute it as needed out into the surroundings.' DC, the US standard, flowed in one direction, like water moving through a pipe, but couldn't easily adjust voltages. AC on the other hand operated more like waves in the sea, reversing direction and using transformers to convert to different voltages.
Though both men were brilliant, their methods were wildly different. Edison believed in trial and error, famously saying that invention was '5 per cent inspiration, 95 per cent perspiration.' Tesla, by contrast, envisioned his machines mentally before ever building them. Edison, without formal schooling, valued practical experience. Tesla, formally educated in Europe, preferred theory and precise design.
Tesla once scathingly described Edison's approach in a New York Times article, writing, 'if he had a needle to find in a haystack he would not stop to reason where it was most likely to be, but would proceed at once, with the feverish diligence of a bee, to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search.'
However, the two rivals originally started as collaborators.
In 1884, Tesla arrived at Edison's office, clutching a letter of recommendation that read, 'my Dear Edison: I know two great men and you are one of them. The other is this young man!' Tesla went on to describe his work on alternating current motors. Edison, uninterested in AC but intrigued by Tesla's skill, hired him to improve his DC generators, allegedly promising $50,000 if he succeeded.
Yet, their partnership soured quickly. When Tesla completed the improvements, Edison reneged, saying the $50,000 offer was made in jest. 'When you become a full-fledged American you will appreciate an American joke,' he quipped.
From that moment, Tesla was determined to make AC succeed.
Tesla, now on his own and digging ditches to survive, was soon discovered by George Westinghouse, a Pittsburgh inventor of railroad air brakes. Westinghouse recognising the potential of Tesla's AC system, bought his patents for $60,000, and agreed to pay royalties of $2.50 per horsepower sold. With Tesla's inventions, Westinghouse took on Edison's General Electric, sparking the Current Wars.
Desperate not to lose ground, Edison launched a ferocious propaganda campaign against AC. He warned it was dangerous because of its high voltage and paid Caltech Professor Harold Brown to electrocute animals including dogs, horses, and even an elephant, to terrify the public.
Brown also illegally used a Westinghouse generator for the first electric chair execution at Auburn State Prison, where William Kemmler, a convicted ax-murderer, died in 'an awful spectacle, far worse than hanging.' The result was a horrifying death that helped coin the term 'Westinghousing.'
Despite Edison's tactics, AC triumphed.
In 1888, Tesla demonstrated his AC motor, and Westinghouse hired him to commercialise it. 'Once Tesla solved the problem of creating a motor that could operate using AC, then it was clearly the superior tech,' Jonnes writes.
The decisive moment came in 1893, when Westinghouse won the bid to electrify the Chicago World's Fair. Dubbed the White City, the fair dazzled 27 million visitors (25 per cent of America's population) with thousands of electric lights, including 3,000 light on its giant Ferris wheel. 'In a world where electricity was new—where many people still read by the light of gas or oil lamps and walked down pitch-black streets after dark—the sight was astounding,' writes Stephanie Sammartino McPherson in War of the Currents: Thomas Edison vs Nikola Tesla.
One Polish immigrant recalled, 'having seen nothing but kerosene lamps for illumination, this was like getting a sudden vision of Heaven.' Author Hamlin Garland urged his parents, 'sell the cookstove if necessary and come. You must see the fair.'
Eventually, even Edison had to admit defeat, acknowledging that 'Tesla has solved an extremely difficult problem'—a reference to Tesla's successful AC motor.
Still, it came at a price. Years of legal battles and financial strain left Westinghouse nearly bankrupt. To save the company, he asked Tesla to tear up their lucrative royalty contract. Tesla, in a historic act of generosity, agreed. Westinghouse Electric survived but Tesla never recovered financially.
When Edison died in 1931, President Herbert Hoover asked Americans to dim their bulbs in tribute, and the New York Daily News declared, 'Thomas Edison—Genius Inventor—Dies at 84.'
Tesla's sharp critique in The New York Times stood out. About Edison, Tesla wrote, 'he had no hobby, cared for no sort of amusement of any kind and lived in utter disregard of the most elementary rules of hygiene.'
Yet by the time Tesla died alone in 1943, surrounded only by the pigeons he lovingly nursed, his name had faded into obscurity.
His New York Times obituary mentioned his eccentricities including his obsession with pigeons, his fear of germs, his belief in a 'death beam' and his optimism of interplanetary communication. Meanwhile, Edison's legacy had been canonised, his name taught in every primary school across the world.
However, history has a way of correcting itself.
Although Edison won the PR battle during their lives, Tesla's name lives on – notably through Elon Musk's electric car company, but also in the very system that powers our homes and cities.
Ironically, DC is also now making a comeback. Computers, solar panels, electric vehicles, and LEDs all run on direct current, and high-voltage DC lines are being used to reduce energy loss in long-distance transmission.
Still, the infrastructure Tesla built remains the backbone of modern electricity. And the legacy of the War of the Currents – equal parts science, ego, and spectacle – continues to electrify history.