Hey, it’s Nikola.
I need to tell you what is happening because I don’t think you’ll believe me.
Edison found out about Westinghouse. He found out about my Alternating Current system. And he has realized that if my technology wins, his entire empire is finished.
So how does the great Thomas Edison — the Wizard of Menlo Park, America’s most beloved inventor — respond to a superior technology?
He’s killing animals.
Edison has launched a public campaign to convince the country that Alternating Current is lethal. Not just inefficient — he’s telling people it will murder their families. Interviews, funded newspaper stories, everything he can to make the public terrified of AC.
But that wasn’t enough. Last week he started holding public demonstrations where he pays neighborhood children to collect stray dogs and cats off the streets, brings them into his laboratory, hooks them up to an AC generator, and electrocutes them in front of reporters.
Thomas Edison is paying children to bring him animals so he can publicly kill them with my electricity to prove a point.
He’s done this multiple times. Dogs, cats, even cattle. He invites the press every time. The next day the papers print exactly what he wants — “Alternating Current Kills!” And it’s working. People are becoming frightened.
This is what drives me insane — it’s a complete lie. Of course electricity can kill. His electricity can kill too. Direct Current at high voltage is just as deadly. He knows this. Every engineer knows this. But Edison isn’t trying to have a scientific argument. He’s trying to scare people who don’t know the difference. And scared people don’t think clearly.
Westinghouse is furious. He’s a composed man — I’ve never seen him raise his voice — but when the stories started he went very quiet in a way that made me afraid to be in the room. I asked what we should do. He said something I won’t forget:
“We do not fight liars by becoming liars. We fight them by winning so clearly that nobody can deny it.”
I like this man very much.
But it’s difficult to sit here calmly while Edison parades dead animals in front of cameras and tells the world my work is a danger to society. I left everything to come to this country. I’ve been cheated, robbed, forced to dig ditches. I built something extraordinary. And now the most powerful man in my industry is spending his fortune not to build something better, but to make people too afraid to even look at what I built.
There’s a rumor that Edison is lobbying the government to use Alternating Current for a new invention — the electric chair. He wants my technology publicly associated with death. He wants people to hear “Alternating Current” and think of a man being killed by the state.
I designed this system to light up cities. To power homes and hospitals and schools across distances Edison can’t dream of reaching. And he wants to turn it into a murder weapon so he can keep selling his inferior product.
A massive contract is coming — the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. Whoever wins the bid to power that fair does it in front of millions. Edison wants it. Westinghouse wants it. Whoever lights up that fair wins this war permanently.
Edison can kill all the dogs he wants. I’m going to light up a city.
More soon.
— Nikola
