So what about all those areas that weren’t within a mile of a power station? The answer was provided by Westinghouse and Nikola Tesla, who pioneered the use of alternating currents. While the current in Edison’s wires would travel in one direction, like water down a river, the current in Westinghouse and Tesla’s wires pulsed, a little like the waves in the sea. The genius of AC was that it could send high voltages along very thin wires, which meant, first and foremost, that the world would not run out of copper and, second, that you no longer had to locate your power station right inside your
...more
