--- title: The Real History That Inspired the Movie 'The Current War' description: What to know about the real epic rivalry between Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse—and the invention of the electric chair canonical: https://time.com/5698700/current-war-real-history/ author: Olivia B. Waxman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2019-10-25T17:45:48.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:52:33.198Z article:section: History og:title: The Real History Behind 'The Current War' og:description: What to know about the real epic rivalry between Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse og:url: https://time.com/5698700/current-war-real-history/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf87c33117c2e53f1/698a04deb21a9c684d502929/edison-tesla-current-war.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 4240 og:image:height: 2385 og:image:alt: DSC02416.ARW og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Real History Behind 'The Current War' twitter:description: What to know about the real epic rivalry between Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf87c33117c2e53f1/698a04deb21a9c684d502929/edison-tesla-current-war.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # The Real History Behind _The Current War_ > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Thomas Edison and the AC/DC Battle [Watch (HLS stream): Thomas Edison and the AC/DC Battle](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/sAl3scYg.m3u8) (4:00)  _Published 2010-06-30. Believing direct current to be superior to and alternating one, Thomas Edison went to great lengths – even electrocuting elephants – to prove his point_  by [Olivia B. Waxman](https://time.com/author/olivia-b-waxman/)  ## Olivia B. Waxman Staff Writer Oct 25, 2019 5:45 PM UTC  Actor Nicholas Hoult as the inventor Nikola Tesla in The Current War, showing off the power of the alternating-current electricity system that lit up the Chicago World's Fair in 1893. Actor Nicholas Hoult as the inventor Nikola Tesla in The Current War, showing off the power of the alternating-current electricity system that lit up the Chicago World's Fair in 1893. Dean Rogers  by [Olivia B. Waxman](https://time.com/author/olivia-b-waxman/)  ## Olivia B. Waxman Staff Writer Oct 25, 2019 5:45 PM UTC One irony of history is that while Thomas Edison invented the first practical and affordable [light bulb](https://time.com/3517011/thomas-edison/), he didn’t invent a practical and affordable system for keeping those lights on nationwide. The distinction for developing the system for transporting electricity that way goes jointly to George Westinghouse, the inventor of the railroad air brake, and to Nikola Tesla, a visionary engineer from the Austrian empire. In the 1880s, the three went to battle over who had the superior technology for electrical transmission. The three-way rivalry between the inventors is the premise of [_The Current War_](https://www.indiewire.com/2019/06/the-current-war-trailer-weinstein-company-thomas-edison-biopic-1202152831/)(a movie that has its own [dramatic back story](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2019/05/the-current-war-movie-release-date)), starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Edison, Nicholas Hoult as Tesla and Michael Shannon as Westinghouse. Edison was promoting direct current (DC), while Westinghouse was promoting alternating current (AC). As the [U.S. Department of Energy](https://www.energy.gov/eere/articles/current-obsession-acdc) explains, direct current “runs continually in a single direction, like in a battery or a fuel cell,” while “alternating current reverses direction a certain number of times per second — 60 in the U.S. — and can be converted to different voltages relatively easily using a transformer.” But the differences between the two went beyond their definitions. “If we were living in Edison’s world, we’d have a large coal-operated generating plant every mile or two, because DC couldn’t travel any distance,” says Jill Jonnes, author of _Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World._ (Jonnes was not involved in the film.) “The brilliance of AC was that you could send it long distances, bring the voltage down via another transformer station, and distribute it as needed out into the surroundings.” On the other hand, DC systems were ahead of AC systems in terms of developing a motor. There was huge business potential for nailing the design of electric motors, in terms of the future of powering machines, factories and appliances. Tesla wanted to develop an AC-power motor, and had tried to get Edison on board when he worked for Edison in New York City in 1884; Tesla left after six months when it was clear that Edison wasn’t interested in that idea. Edison wanted to keep proving his DC system was better, despite its drawbacks, so he zeroed in on the fact that alternating current operated at much higher voltages than direct current. Therefore, he reasoned, it must be more dangerous. As he [wrote](https://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1999143%5F1999202%5F1999203-2,00.html) in 1886, “Westinghouse will kill a customer within six months after he puts in a system of any size.” The following year, an opportunity was presented to show just how dangerous it was. In 1887, Alfred Southwick, a member of a commission established by the New York State legislature to explore capital-punishment alternatives after a series of hangings gone awry, wrote to Edison asking if he had any thoughts. Edison was initially reluctant to respond because he had always opposed the death penalty, but saw an opportunity to discredit Westinghouse. He recommended alternating currents “manufactured principally” by Westinghouse as the “best appliance” for killing someone “instantaneously” with “the least amount of suffering.” As TIME [reported](http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1999143%5F2002893,00.html) in a 2010 special issue about Edison’s work, Edison teamed up with fellow Westinghouse opponent Harold Brown, whose experiments at Edison’s laboratory in West Orange, N.J., determined that a dog could survive 1,000 volts of DC but would be killed by just under 300 volts of AC. During a press conference, Brown electrocuted a 76-lb. dog named Dash. Brown designed the first electric chair, and Edison helped him secure AC generators through a secondhand dealer. At 6:40 a.m. on Aug. 6, 1890, in the Auburn State Prison in upstate New York, William Kemmler, who was convicted of murdering his common-law wife, was zapped with a 17-second jolt of 1,300 volts of electricity via AC, but didn’t die. Kemmler, visibly struggling to breathe, was given a charge of 2,000 volts. Four minutes later, the body caught on fire, and he was declared dead. Despite Edison’s efforts, the incident was not enough to keep his opponent down. After Tesla demonstrated his AC motor in 1888, Westinghouse bought up Tesla’s AC patents and hired him so he could commercialize the motor. “Once Tesla solved the problem of creating a motor that could operate using AC, then it was clearly the superior tech,” says Jonnes. Westinghouse’s company won the bid to electrify the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893\. That dazzling spectacle ended the “War of the Currents.” That same year, Westinghouse’s company signed a contract to install AC generators at Niagara Falls, and in 1895, the first hydro-electric power plant launched there. But Edison’s career as an inventor was far from over. His moving-picture camera and Kinetoscope viewer helped establish him as [one of the inventors of movies.](https://www.nps.gov/edis/learn/kidsyouth/motion-pictures.htm) And Edison did win out in terms of being the most remembered of the three in terms of household name recognition — at least until recently, when the introduction of [Elon Musk’](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1176190550854127616?lang=en)s Tesla electric cars gave him some competition. The cars, Jonnes adds, would be right up the real Tesla’s alley, as he loved the finer things in life. But ultimately, inventing things that are used every day proved key to Edison’s fame. “The thing I always say about Edison, about why he is the most famous inventor,” she says, “is we all understand his inventions and we all get enormous pleasure out of them.” ## Transcript >> The Battle of Currents was basically a war between Edison's direct current and alternating current, which was Edison's great competitor in the hands of George Westinghouse and other companies. Direct current is a lower- voltage current. In Edison's day, it could only travel, however, over short distance in about a mile, a mile and a half. Meaning that you'd have to have many dynamos in any given city in order to light up the whole city. Alternating current is a much higher voltage current, but able to travel over much larger distances then when it reaches its destination. The voltage is stepped down by a transformer so that it's at a low enough current that it can light small things like appliances and electrical bulbs. Edison was dedicated to direct current initially, convinced himself that alternating current was more dangerous, set out on a tremendous public relations campaign to convince the rest of America that alternating current was more dangerous. George Westinghouse was an inventor and he first became famous for inventing the railway air break, but he started to take an interest in electricity at about the same time that Edison did. The single most important episode in what they called the Battle of the Electrical Currents or the War of the Electrical Currents between AC and DC was the first execution by electric chair. Around the late 1880s, there was a search in America for " a more humane" form of execution. Up until then, most executions were hanging. The electric chair hadn't quite been invented yet, but the idea that electrical current could be used to kill somebody was already clear because many people had been accidentally electrocuted in various ways. Because Edison was the most prominent electrical inventor in America, the commission sought his opinion. He realized that this might be a great opportunity to publicize further his view that alternating current was so much more dangerous. So, he wrote back to the commission and ensured them that, yes, it was possible to execute criminals this way, but only if you use an alternating current dynamo manufactured by George Westinghouse. Soon after that, a gentleman in New York named Harold Brown, who was a self- taught electrical engineer, wrote a letter to a New York newspaper condemning alternating current as being terrifically dangerous and even condemning the Westinghouse Company by name. Brown then allied himself with Edison. Edison brought Brown back to his laboratories and allowed him to do things like execute animals there. As late as 1903, he was still doing things like electrocuting elephants in public to scare the public into thinking that alternating current was the kind of thing that could kill even an elephant, so imagine what it could do to you. Brown was asked by the State of New York to design and build the first electric chair when New York decided that electricity would be its means of execution. And of course, he decided to use alternating current. The first man to die in the electric chair, a killer named William Kemmler, was executed in 1890. And the next day, the newspapers had headlines saying, Kemmler Westinghoused, a word that Edison had wanted to put out there in American language as a means of cementing his view that Westinghouse had a deadly current, the executioner's current as they called it. Despite all this, cities were interested in building generators every couple of blocks because direct current could only travel for a mile. Westinghouse just had a superior product, the product that was gonna win this war. By the early decades of the 20th century, alternating current had pretty much completely overtaken direct current. In United States today, all households draw a universal alternating current system of about 110 volts. 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