Thomas Edison VS. Nikola Tesla

When it comes to electricity, Thomas Edison is the name that always comes to mind, considered the father of invention, he was awarded 1,093 patents in his lifetime (www.thomasedison.org). He is undoubtedly one of the greatest minds of modern times, but what the general public sometimes disregards is that he was a protagonist in one of the greatest corporate wars of the 20th century.

In 1884 Thomas Edison welcomed Serbian engineer, Nikola Tesla, to work with him in New York. Edison's DC apparatus reigned supreme at the time. But Tesla had conceived of a new method using alternating current (AC), which, unlike DC, could transmit significant amounts of power over long distances. According to Tesla, Edison dismissed his ideas as a waste of time, not to mention dangerous given the high voltage involved. Tesla designed several products for Edison, expecting to receive a promised $50,000 bonus for his efforts (about $1 million today). But when Tesla asked for his reward in the spring of 1885, Edison told him it had been a joke all along.

Tesla quit and went out on his own and eventually made ​​an alliance with industrial titan George Westinghouse, together they ventured into the electricity business. When Thomas Edison heard about this he ridiculed them. But not long after, the war came. It wasn't long before Edison was holding shocking public demonstrations to discredit AC power. To make his point, he electrocuted dogs, cows, horses, even an elephant. He even put an effort to use AC to power the first electric chair. The execution lasted eight minutes and required two attempts, it goes without saying that this was a grisly affair. (Fortune Magazine, 2013)

What an unexpected behavior from the hero and role model of thousands of people in the last century. Thomas Edison proved that in this war, he was a sore loser and a cheating player. The epitome of unethical behavior is hard to define in this story, as there are so many. First of all, what type of a boss makes an employee work and develop products for their company with the promises of money?, to later dismiss them by ridicule, claiming they were a joke. Even worse than this, what man of science and business willingly kills inocent animals and prolongs the suffering of a man just to discredit his companies competition? 

This makes us wonder, was Edison really such an unethical business man? Was he forced to do so by people behind him? Or, was the business environment of the time ripe for this kind of behavior? Perhaps the moral conduct of the time did not see this as something wrong or unfair, just healthy competition.