At that time, compared with Westinghouse, GE had great advantages. The DC power station has reached a certain scale. Westinghouse's business has just started. In addition, Edison and his team worked hard to improve practical electric lights. I especially appreciate Edison's team (note that I said team! Not alone! ! ) In the story of improving the light bulb. You know, how many people devoted themselves to the study of electric light in 100 years.
At that time, the biggest use of electricity was to light electric lights. Westinghouse Electric is a company that advocates alternating current. In the battle between DC and AC (direct current, alternating current), a decisive sequence is: 1893 Chicago World Expo lighting (previously written as 1983).
1。 Westinghouse won the war because it owned the patent of another man named Sawyer. This patent is similar to Edison's electric light design. But! ! Sawyer's design at that time was regarded as an experimental failure by himself. Why did this experiment fail and become a patent? I will talk about it in the long answer below. But ah, but! What does this image mean? This means that light bulbs can be made according to Edison's design.
2! If Edison sues him, he will say, yours is very similar to mine! ! I will sue you! In fact, before Westinghouse acquired another company and got Sawyer's patent. The light bulb in that company is already Edison-style filament (I'm afraid the translation is not good, so I just put it in the original text). To put it simply, Edison's wick is filiform, because he learned to use something with high resistance (I wrote small before). At that time, many people's clothes were flaky. So I think this means filiform wick!
The later story is that the advantage of alternating current is greater than that of DC. AC (communication) won. But what is the story after that? Most people only know that Westinghouse Power, which represents AC, won, but few people know the next story! GE (general electric), which once represented DC, immediately fought back and invested a lot of manpower and material resources in AC. Those smart people improved better transformers, generators and other things used in AC power systems. The big winner in the end is Ge! It's GE (General Electric), which once stood for DC! It's Edison's GE company!
3。 What I personally like most about Edison is that, as a successful businessman, he can commercialize technology, support so many smart people and leave behind a great company GE. Only a group of smart people can achieve the greatest things. No matter how talented a person is, he is also small. Nuclear magnetic resonance * * * vibration! Aircraft engine! All kinds of medical care, electricity and fossil fuel transportation!
PS: Of course, I also think Edison may be a little jealous of Tesla. So, on the question of alternating current, I did something unreasonable. For example, to prove the harm of alternating current, electrocute cats and dogs. Invented the electric chair. However, as an inventor, isn't it normal to be jealous of another person who is more talented than himself?