Current Wars
By Peter LloydI find it difficult to contain my frustration when someone dismisses solid evidence and chooses to remain grounded in error. Such a person typically retreats to the outhouse of equal opinion with, “Well, that’s your opinion, and you’re entitled to it. Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion. Let’s agree to disagree...”
While some complex issues may leave the intelligent, unbiased evaluator at a loss for a clear choice, others can be resolved through rational discourse, logic, and clear-headed decision making. But rational, humans ain’t, and some of our greatest creative geniuses have gone down in history as wrong-minded knuckleheads, including one of the two creative geniuses locked in battle other the suitability of two very different ways of delivering electric current.
AC vs. DC
When the electric utility industry began to distribute electric current in the United States, power first came in the form of direct current (DC). The kind that still powers your flashlights, some smoke alarms, your car’s starter motor, and almost all electronic equipment when it’s not plugged in. DC’s counterpart, alternating current (AC), developed for distribution in Europe, proved itself much more practical for large-scale distribution. Though both kinds of current flow just as quickly through copper wire and other conductors, DC could not be distributed economically over more than one mile.
Thomas Edison advocated supplying direct current and fought to keep the country powered by DC for a number of selfish reasons. He stood to gain substantial royalties for its use. He had invested time and money in the development of DC generation, and the usage meter he had invented worked only with DC. As brilliant and prolific an inventor as Edison had proven himself to be, he lacked the formal training and deep understanding that went into the development of alternating current.Nikola Tesla, a monumentally prolific inventor, not only understood the finer points of AC, he developed its delivery for George Westinghouse and company. AC won the day, of course, but not after a bitter battle.
Shocking Behavior
In order to sway public and government opinion toward DC, Edison engaged in unethical and inhumane stunts. He lied about AC deaths and arranged for the electrocution of animals—cats, dogs, and farm animals. An early practitioner of Luntz-like language manipulation, he tried to popularize calling electrocution “being Westinghoused”!
Most egregious, perhaps, was his invention of the electric chair for the state of New York. Even though Edison opposed capital punishment, he powered his chair with AC current to demonstrate and exaggerate its deadly power. William Kemmler was brutally executed in the bungled first use of the chair.
Edison’s tenacity outlasted defeat. He filmed the execution of a circus elephant with AC current years after the general adoption of AC distribution. Tesla continued his scientific career with success after success, but behaved more and more bizarrely as he aged and died broke and alone. Bitter enemies after the battle, neither genius was honored with a Nobel Prize, possibly as a result of their rivalry.
It’s Up to Us
Having lived through the public’s choices between the Betamax and VHS videotape formats and the Mac vs. Windows option, I’m not sure humans will ever make rational choices in the court of general public opinion.
You’d think we would have learned by now to recognize publicity-stunt antics, like electrocuting an elephant, as a clear symptom of reason deficit, if not pure wrong-headed desperation. But we still see demagogs driving public opinion. And based on the Edison vs. Tesla, AC vs. DC fiasco, half our creative geniuses don’t do any better!
That means it’s up to you and me. Of course, it’s easy in hindsight to see where Edison went wrong. How do we make rational decisions in the heat of debate? A good first step, I submit, would be to dismiss out of hand the arguments of anyone who begins to sound like a raving Edison.
Peter Lloyd is co-creator with Stephen Grossman of Animal Crackers, the breakthrough problem-solving tool designed to crack your toughest problems.
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