AC/DC: The Savage Tale of the First Standards WarJohn Wiley & Sons, 6 jan 2011 - 208 pagina's AC/DC tells the little-known story of how Thomas Edison wrongly bet in the fierce war between supporters of alternating current and direct current. The savagery of this electrical battle can hardly be imagined today. The showdown between AC and DC began as a rather straightforward conflict between technical standards, a battle of competing methods to deliver essentially the same product, electricity. But the skirmish soon metastasized into something bigger and darker. In the AC/DC battle, the worst aspects of human nature somehow got caught up in the wires; a silent, deadly flow of arrogance, vanity, and cruelty. Following the path of least resistance, the war of currents soon settled around that most primal of human emotions: fear. AC/DC serves as an object lesson in bad business strategy and poor decision making. Edison's inability to see his mistake was a key factor in his loss of control over the ?operating system? for his future inventions?not to mention the company he founded, General Electric. |
Inhoudsopgave
LIGHTNING IN A BOTTLE | |
ENTER THE WIZARD | |
LET THERE BE LIGHT | |
ELECTRIFYING THE BIG APPLE | |
TESLA | |
THE ANIMAL EXPERIMENTS | |
PULSE OF THE WORLD | |
KILLING AN ELEPHANT | |
TWILIGHT BY BATTERY POWER | |
DCS REVENGE | |
Epilogue | |
Further Readings in Electricity | |
The Author | |
OLD SPARKY | |
Overige edities - Alles bekijken
Veelvoorkomende woorden en zinsdelen
AC system AC/DC alternating current animal began Betamax Brown’s experiments building camera carbon charge circuit was closed company’s connections consumed Continuous current copper danger DC power deadly death declared demonstration device direct current disk dynamo early Edison recalled Edison system Edison wrote electric chair electric light electrical system electrician electrified electrocution electrodes Electromotive force elephant engineer execution Experiment Same dog experimenters Faraday filament film flow Franklin George Westinghouse hand Harold Brown HD DVD human incandescent lamp incandescent light induction motor industry invention inventor Kemmler killed Kinetoscope kite laboratory later Leyden jar machine magnetic Menlo Park metal motion picture negative never newspapers Niagara Nikola Tesla patents Pearl Street phonograph polyphase polyphase system power plant produced quickly reporter scientific shock Sony soon sparks storage battery telegraph Tesla motor Thomas Edison Topsy transmission transmitted turned voltage volts volts of alternating wire York
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Profiles in Folly: History's Worst Decisions and why They Went Wrong Alan Axelrod Gedeeltelijke weergave - 2008 |