AC/DC The Savage Tale of the First Standards War

Thomas Edison backs direct current in the contest over how electricity should be delivered to homes and businesses, and he bets wrong. The rival camp favors alternating current. Both sides offer essentially the same product, and the fight starts as a dispute over technical standards.

That plain disagreement does not stay plain. The war between AC and DC turns darker as arrogance, vanity and cruelty enter the contest, and fear becomes the emotion that drives it. The savagery of the fight is hard to picture today.

This is narrative non-fiction about a little-known episode in the history of electrical technology. Tom McNichol tells it as a story of rival camps and the damage they do to one another, and also as a case study in bad business strategy and poor decision making.

Edison's refusal to admit his mistake is central to the account. It costs him control over the operating system that his later inventions would depend on, and it costs him control of General Electric, the company he founded. Readers interested in the history of technology, or in how stubbornness wrecks a strong position, will find the argument laid out through one concrete conflict.