Alternating or continuous? When Nikola Tesla made Thomas Edison lose the war of currents

More than two centuries after the first battery invented by Volta, electricity
is poised to establish itself as the energy of the 21st^e century. But each technology, each mode of production, each use has resulted
of fights. Real duels whose outcome has helped shape our energy future.

The smoke rises under each of the legs of the animal shod in copper soles. A few seconds, and the enormous mass staggers, tilts, collapses. In front of the camera Thomas Edisonthis January 4, 1903, the elephant Topsy, guilty of having killed a man, died, crossed by an alternating current of 6000 volts.

What prompted Edison to immortalize the death of the circus animal? The prolific inventor’s passion for his latest baby, the camera? Or a morbid evocation of the “war of currents”, lost a decade earlier and during which the sinister electric chair became a communication argument?

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Thomas Edison was the most admired genius of his time