AC/DC: The Savage Tale of the First Standards War by Tom McNichol09/27/2007 09:33:15 PMLocation : Cleveland, OH
Something that everyone takes for granted, electricity, has a very interesting history. The book, AC/DC: The Savage Tale of the First Standards War, by Tom McNichol, does a very nice job of giving the reader an overview of the early days of electrical power generation. I say "overview" because at 190 pages, there isn't a lot of room for an exhaustively researched subject. But for what McNichol does, he does it quite well.
Contents:
Prologue: Negative and Positive
Chapter 1: First Sparks
Chapter 2: Lightening in a Bottle
Chapter 3: Enter the Wizard
Chapter 4: Let There Be Light
Chapter 5: Electrifying the Big Apple
Chapter 6: Tesla
Chapter 7: The Animal Experiments
Chapter 8: Old Sparky
Chapter 9: Pulse of the World
Chapter 10: Killing an Elephant
Chapter 11: Twilight by Battery Power
Chapter 12: DC's Revenge
Epilogue: Standards Wars: Past, Present, and Future
Further Reading in Electricity
Picture a world without electricity. Hard to do, isn't it? Everything we use consumes electricity. But there was a time when there was no electricity. But as some people began to study it, there arose two competing men, who would fight to have their standard be the one that delivered power to the masses. The great inventor, Thomas Edison backed DC. An industrial titan, George Westinghouse, and a very eccentric inventor, Nikola Tesla, backed AC. Each man, Edison and Westinghouse, had factories churning out parts for their standard. They employed any means possible to get the public to back their method of electrical distribution. Edison, for his part, developed (or perfected) the electric chair, using AC, to show that it kills. McNichol gives you a couple of chapters on the electrocution of animals and humans, which were unnerving.
You might think that a subject like electricity would be boring, but McNichol focuses primarily on the central characters. There is little technical information, so the novel moves quickly. The personalities of the men, Edison, Tesla, and Westinghouse, are brought to life and help the reader to understand why Edison lost the war (mainly stubbornness and a lack of vision as to customer needs and wants) and how Westinghouse and Tesla were able to win (Westinghouse could anticipate some needs, and Tesla - well, he was a person unto himself). One of the most interesting facts is the distances electricity could travel using AC or DC. AC could span great distances, a fact that was not lost on Westinghouse. In fact, a power plant that he built to light Telluride, CO, is still working as is the one at Niagara Falls, NY (which supplies New York and Buffalo with power).
This is a great read for those looking for an overview of early days of electricity, electrical distribution, and a fierce standards war. McNichols' Epilogue tells a tale of VHS versus Betamax and Blu-Ray versus HD-DVD. But the lessons in the book could equally be applied to OOXML and other tech standards wars.
Technorati tag: book review Tom McNichol
Comments
Comment posted by Stan Rogers09/28/2007 04:38:25 PM
Homepage: http://stanrogers.blogspot.com
Um, are you insinuating that Nikola Tesla was somehow eccentric? 
Comment posted by Gregg Eldred10/01/2007 05:01:31 PM
Homepage: http://www.ns-tech.com/blog/geldred.nsf
@Stan - based on what I read in this book - Yes. 
I have another book on the same subject to read. One that supposedly is more thorough, and I expect some really good anecdotes about Tesla in that one.
But don't get me wrong, the man was brilliant. He just didn't play well with others.
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