If Edison’s Manhattan grid, in 1884, made and transmitted direct current at 110 volts over about a mile before its usefulness diminished to zero, Westinghouse and Tesla’s early alternating current system, in 1886, made electricity at 500 volts but transmitted it at 3,000 volts. By 1891, AC had been transmitted 16 miles between Tivoli and Rome, 14 miles in Portland, Oregon, 2.6 miles in Telluride, and an extraordinary 108 miles at 40,000 volts in Germany. Every experimental installation from the late 1880s to the early 1890s proved more and more successful on this account, until by 1894, 80
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