🎤 Nikola Tesla vs. Thomas Edison vs. AC vs. DC Power on : Okay, let's get this electrified! Here's our Tesla vs. Edison and AC vs. DC power debate, with 10 rounds of discourse. *** **Round 1:** **Thomas Edison:** Good evening. I'm Thomas Edison, and I brought light to the world with Direct Current. DC is simple, safe, and understandable. My system efficiently provides power directly where you need it: in homes, businesses, and factories. We can create better batteries using direct current and there's a safety in knowing its use is only short range and easier to fix. Why gamble on anything else? **Nikola Tesla:** With all due respect, Mr. Edison, I am Nikola Tesla. Your DC current is archaic. It's inefficient to send across any significant distance without unacceptable power loss, requiring power plants on every block! My Alternating Current, AC, can be stepped up to high voltages for long-distance transmission, then stepped down again for safe use. Think of the future of humanity, not the limitations of what you can easily sell. *** **Round 2:** **Thomas Edison:** Tesla, your system, with its high voltages, is downright dangerous! It poses an immediate and grave risk to the public. Think of those vulnerable using it every day and their risk of immediate and grave injury. It is a safety catastrophe and not even the cost of transmitting across distance justifies putting our everyday user at risk. With the lower transmission, you get safety as your benefit. *** **Nikola Tesla:** Nonsense, Edison! Transformers are readily available and very safe if maintained. Sure accidents do happen in our world today, that should never be tolerated and be dealt with through education and safe management of it and by professional engineers, but to use fear over your inefficient power lines is only a money play, and not for society benefit. Stop clinging to outdated methods. Your DC is like using carrier pigeons when we have telephones! *** **Round 3:** **Thomas Edison:** Telephones you say? They use DC! And remember how effective I was with communication methods to create our modern age of technological success! With my efficient production that I have perfected, DC is something I can sell with guaranteed profits for my company that keeps the modern-day consumer in mind for cost as well. Why should your AC power increase prices of electronics? The world isn't yours just to take by AC. *** **Nikola Tesla:** Because AC *is* the future! DC systems use expensive copper and short distances, to power anything substantial across large cities you'll waste billions in it that way. Imagine DC trying to power your west coast cities, it wouldn't work. I do agree prices should come down, but once my methods have widespread acceptance the components can become widespread with more manufactures. *** **Round 4:** **Thomas Edison:** Wide acceptance is what it needs? You want people to gamble on that when my perfected methods of DC has existed. Also it has a very small power fluctuation. I provide smooth and consistent power with DC to any household today while your methods give slight jolts, almost like a shock, due to the alternation in current that's not the case in DC. *** **Nikola Tesla:** Shock?! Edison, my AC delivers power safely and reliably if installed properly. You know as well as I do that electrical circuits aren't magic, they must be understood by professional electricians. If we only had your way that will create limitations to human evolution in that there is an overreliance of a localized grid. It makes you wonder how you made the modern age when your philosophy prevents long distance infrastructure! *** **Round 5:** **Thomas Edison:** Localized grids ARE secure! That is what the masses of today NEED! Large infrastructure can easily collapse into nothing and is something no single group can handle. Having several power stations along your community has less strain than a centralized power infrastructure you want to create which creates a single point of failure! How will a localized group learn anything about professional AC electricians to operate on if they can't get started on an early age? *** **Nikola Tesla:** By understanding science and engineering! Fear is a weak basis to make an educated assessment of. I’m pushing for future generation and expansion. AC and professional electricians are for an engineer that knows both DC and AC methods, therefore using DC helps them later understand AC. Also DC is just as easy to collapse as AC. But using both, it is possible to power up and backup each others limitations, especially if we expand as much power in the future and require global energy to move goods. *** **Round 6:** **Thomas Edison:** Global energy! Utterly impractical! It is difficult and dangerous in the case that war happens and all it takes is cutting that wire you're pushing to collapse. Do you forget security to focus on energy transfer or are you oblivious? War is possible so focusing on that is more pragmatic, more necessary and DC offers protection against it due to its easy use and control by small group of users. No reliance, therefore, security and more security over reliance. *** **Nikola Tesla:** You're assuming a weakness I don't concede. AC grid can be designed with backup systems. In war the localized points for you are the ones being attacked in particular! You can't move DC around. To argue war negates the advantage AC grid systems and safety, and there needs to be distributed power that protects large power stations through distributed power that DC stations in various regions of a larger population. You need both as a fallback! AC gives freedom while your method forces a dependency and that can hurt a group if DC falls too *** **Round 7:** **Thomas Edison:** "Both". Is it "both", Tesla, or simply what you can make the most money from? I'm thinking with my bank balance to ensure investors have faith and continue their investment and support for current operations is paramount. With DC methods they can reliably use their devices for generations because I thought in both long and short distances to supply DC without breaking and I succeeded. It’s easy for them to support for they see it being in a constant, not random, fashion. You don't account for humanity needs *** **Nikola Tesla:** What good is wealth if it’s chained to an obsolete technology?! Human evolution requires a massive scale and a collaborative, international effort. Your short-sighted view will hold back advancements to a basic and unstable economy. Money is not something you take to the grave and therefore my inventions and devices will exist and therefore, I shall be remembered in history, something I think about constantly since our battle started. *** **Round 8:** **Thomas Edison:** Collaboration requires established standards! AC's constant variations makes things inconsistent as each place that is wired up for will vary because that it fluctuates! It must be fixed if someone takes DC methods but wants to shift but there isn’t many! What you need is consistency which only direct current offers without breaking apart those DC establishments that has already invested in that way. **Nikola Tesla:** Adaption allows improvements! AC may change slightly but those little nuances of differences allows scientists such as myself to fine-tune them and change and push beyond the restrictions we may have with consistency. If one does a project from small to large we allow modifications to the existing structure rather than demolishing to the ground just to establish a basic principle from what works. DC might be your foundation, but to push a tower high, use the fine tunings AC allows. *** **Round 9:** **Thomas Edison:** My reputation for innovation is grounded in pragmatism. Simple ideas like the telegraph relay can last for a lifetime which ensures customers such as factories to produce many commodities from that simple innovation which will then have high revenue streams, without collapsing or requiring frequent change. Reliability, stability, cost are some values in which can improve quality and lifestyle to produce much more in less costs! **Nikola Tesla:** Quality for everyone! To innovate in a practical sense should be considered as well. Think how far medical advancement requires power: for every one hundred surgeries if hospitals use DC they only work on the immediate. And you do surgeries that cross the whole body to fix organs you see that need DC will falter. If AC exists, long complex surgery requiring lights and other instruments at scale are possible without much downtime in powering itself and so will require greater access and improvement of your well being in the long-term. It's a fact that medical facilities operate at a fraction more smoothly when they can access it and provide more medical access because of AC and more hospitals should push for it! *** **Round 10:** **Thomas Edison:** It would appear, then, we are at a fundamental impasse. I believe in simplicity, cost, short run practicality, established profits, easy use and most of all safety for now and only focus in things of my concern like our businesses, while Tesla seeks advancement on theoretical long term usage and long distances and hopes to make money through selling of his inventions for it to get started.. History will, without doubt, judge us both. *** **Nikola Tesla:** Indeed. And I trust history will remember my AC innovations being the power grid that will be an option today and still viable in future years. One built on an engineering and scientist that understands that evolution requires adaptation, and advancements in tech are a benefit that should outweigh immediate investments to make our evolution in engineering possible today! Thank you