Tom McNichol

AC/DC

The Savage Tale of the First Standards War

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

This is the story of how Thomas Edison bet wrong in the fierce war between supporters of alternating current (AC) and direct current (DC). The savagery of this electrical battle can be hardly imagined today. AC/DC is an object lesson in bad business strategy and poor decision making.

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Praise for AC/DC

"You'll never look at your wall socket the same again."
--Evan Ratliff, coauthor, Safe: The Race to Protect Ourselves in a Newly Dangerous World

"From the twisted copper wires of electricity's early years McNichol spins a story buzzing with genius and fraud, ambition and infamy, hilarity and humiliation. It's a joy to read: a comic operetta of American industrial history, full of great men, small minds and an alarming number of dead dogs."
--Craig Stoltz, health editor, Washington Post

"Few writers explain technology as well as Tom McNichol. No one's as good at finding the humor in it."
--Jeffrey O'Brien, senior editor, Wired magazine

"A fascinating history of the battle that decided what comes through the wires when we flick a switch. A great story of how far people will go to prove they're 'right' - and make a buck."
--J. J. Yore, executive producer, public radio's Marketplace

"A tale of astonishing geniusand greed, a perfect reflection of the competing forces that built corporate America. McNichol offers us a ringside seat at the birth of a superpower, and it's a bloody, messy, and altogether fascinating spectacle."
--Brooke Gladstone, cohost, NPR's On the Media

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Jossey-Bass Publishers / Wiley & Sons
• 1. Auflage
• Seitenzahl: 208
• Erscheinungstermin: 1. September 2006
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 235mm x 157mm x 17mm
• Gewicht: 385g
• ISBN-13: 9780787982676
• ISBN-10: 0787982679
• Artikelnr.: 20932770

Autorenporträt

TOM MCNICHOL is a contributing editor for Wired magazine. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Salon, the Washington Post, and the Guardian. His radio commentaries and satires have aired on NPR's All Things Considered, Morning Edition, and Marketplace. He's the author of Barking at Prozac (Crown Publishing, 1997), and his work appears in the anthology Afterwords: Stories and Reports from 9/11 and Beyond (Washington Square Press, 2002).

Inhaltsangabe

Prologue Negative and Positive 1
1 First Sparks 5
2 Lightning in a Bottle 13
3 Enter the Wizard 25
4 Let There Be Light 41
5 Electrifying the Big Apple 55
6 Tesla 69
7 The Animal Experiments 87
8 Old Sparky 107
9 Pulse of the World 129
10 Killing an Elephant 143
11 Twilight by Battery Power 155
12 DC's Revenge 173
Epilogue Standards Wars: Past, Present, and Future 181
Further Readings in Electricity 187
The Author 191
Index 193