Comparing Westinghouse And Thomas Edison

Westinghouse and Edison:

In the late 19th century, two of the world's famous inventors went head to head in a vicious public fight over electricity. The prize was the chance to light up the world and to make millions of dollars.

Thomas Edison was the first to produce a range of motors and appliances requiring a DC current. , However Edison’s current could not be easily transported easily. Power plants needed to be located within 1 mile (approx. 1.6 Km) of the end user. (2012 The War of the Currents)

On The other Hand another famous inventor George Westinghouse had a different idea, George felt that AC current was preferable of the two for consumer use as it was cheaper, more reliable and was able to be transferred long distances. And unlike

Generators are based on the principles set out by Faraday’s law of electromagnetic induction. The development of generators has led to mass supply of electricity globally for consumers and industry.

Construction:

Generators have a fairly basic construction consisting of coils of wire within a magnetic field but they still require a number of major components. As shown in figures 1 and 2 these include the rotor, armature, stator, coil and brushes.

• Armature: A cylinder often constructed with iron mounted on an axle.

• Rotor: usually consists of several coils of wire wound on an armature and is the main moving piece.

• Each coil usually consists of many turns of copper wire wound on the armature. Both ends of the coil are connected either to two slip rings (AC) (figure 2) or two opposite bars of a split-ring commutator (DC) (figure 1).

• Stator: The fixed part of the generator consisting of two permanent magnets that have opposite poles and are shaped around the rotor which in turn supplies the magnetic field in which the coils rotate. In some generators, the magnetic field may be provided by two

In 1891 Westinghouse’s AC current won the international Niagara Falls commission contract, to provide electricity to the nearby city of buffalo and from that point on AC was deemed as the winning current.

Outcome: 3

Although the “battle” lasted over 8 years the numerous advantages of George Westinghouse’s AC led to it becoming the industry standard for consumer electricity in the United States. The ability to step up and step down the voltage in an AC current meant that AC could be transferred large distances without much energy loss from the resistance of wires and AC current could be used for a variety of appliances.

This limitation of DC meant that generators had to be placed close to supply areas to prevent excessive energy loss; Edison’s generator could only supply an area of approximately 1.6km2. This was noticed early on when his associate’s attempted to connect light globes to his system and as they got further from the generators the bulbs began to glow dimmer or not at all. This increased cost of having to supply numerous generators made DC an unviable and ineffective