[Vwdiesel] Alternators versus Generators --( for beginners )

[James Hansen]

When Edison (the DC guy) and his competition the AC guy slugged it out ?
the AC
Alternator guy won hands down.--WHY ? the transformers .
____________-

Actually it had more to do with distance and transmission lines.
DC has tremendous resistance losses over relatively short distances.  Thomas
Edison the Industrialist envisioned a nationwide grid of coal fired D/C gen
stations every ten miles give or take, of which the Edison corporation had
majority shares.
Enter an eccentric theorist and inventor named Nicola Telsla.  He rewired
the Niagra gen station for free to make A/C for Westinghouse.  Power
transmission could now be made on one coast, and fed to the other without
significant losses from resistance and heat.   Deal was he was to get free
power with which to conduct his experiments into resonance.. which
Westinghouse screwed him on eventually anyway.
Edison conducted a huge smear campaign touting A/C current as the dreaded
deadly scourge of the power grid, etc, etc, but because of the simplicity
with which it can be used etc, Westinghouse (Tesla) design power generation
quickly became the standard.   There is a statue of Nicola at Niagra left
unlighted on purpose- to highlight that without his eccentric brilliant
theories, we would likely still be in the electronic dark ages.
he incidentally also did the first radio transmission,  transmitted images
over wires similarly to a fax, and many other thing too numerous to list,
mostly electrical.
-James
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