This has nothing to do with a hard rock band

I’m not an engineer so I never really knew, until just recently, there are significant differences between alternating and direct currents (known as AC and DC). I thought they were always considered together as part of the overall fabric making up the blanket I call electricity. As their respective names imply, DC is current that flows in only one direction while AC is a flow of charge that changes direction periodically, which also changes the voltage level.

What I recently learned was that home and office electrical outlets are almost always AC, while most of the electronics plugged into those outlets or that use a USB cable run on DC.



Thomas Edison

What’s more, I didn’t know that the theories behind AC and DC sparked (pardon the pun) an all out battle in the late 19^th Century between two American scientific/engineering titans, Thomas Alva Edison, who by 1887 had constructed 121 DC power stations in the United States, and George Westinghouse, who in the following year purchased from none other than Nikola Tesla the patents for AC motors and transmissions. The problem with Edison’s DC at this time was that it could not easily be converted to high voltages. As a result, Edison proposed a system of small, local power plants that would power individual neighborhoods or city sections. Even though the voltage drop across the power lines was accounted for, power plants needed to be located within a mile of the end user. This limitation made power distribution in rural areas extremely difficult, if not impossible.



George Westinghouse

With Tesla’s patents, Westinghouse worked to perfect the AC distribution system. Transformers provided an inexpensive method to step up the voltage of AC to several thousand volts and back down to usable levels. At higher voltages, the same power could be transmitted at a much lower current, which meant less power lost due to resistance in the wires. As a result, large power plants could be located many miles away and service a greater number of people and buildings.

This led to a major battle between Edison and Westinghouse. Edison tried to prove AC was too dangerous for public consumption and he went so far as having his cohorts stage public executions of animals using AC and having two direct employees, Harold P. Brown and Arthur Kennelly, design the first electric chair for the state of New York using AC.

Today, I’m not sure that many people care enough about this historical battle to shell out the bucks to see a movie on this subject, even one with such high-powered acting talent as Benedict Cumberbatch as Edison and Michael Shannon as Westinghouse, especially when you consider the educational level of today’s average moviegoer. The filmmakers have come up with a great title for their film, The Current War, in hopes. I’m guessing, to make it seem more relevant while not misleading the public as to the subject of the movie. I have a feeling this could be a very fine film that could very easily and very quickly be nothing more than a dim bulb.