Hey, it’s Nikola.
It’s over. I won.
The 1893 World’s Fair. The biggest event this country has ever held — an entire temporary city built along the Chicago lakefront to show the world what America is capable of. Every country sent exhibits. Palaces made of white plaster, canals with gondolas, machines nobody had ever seen before. They’re calling it the White City.
And the whole thing needed electricity.
When the contract went up for bidding, Edison wanted it badly. This was his chance to prove to the entire world that Direct Current was the future. He submitted his bid. Westinghouse submitted ours. Edison bid over a million dollars. We bid half that. Not because we were desperate — because Alternating Current is simply cheaper to run. That’s the whole point. That’s always been the whole point. Edison needs a power station every few miles. We need one.
We won the contract. Edison lost. I’m told he didn’t take the news well.
We had to build everything from nothing. Edison, because he’s a petty man, refused to let us use his lightbulb design. He holds the patent and blocked us from purchasing them. He thought this would ruin us — what good is an electrical system with no bulbs? So we designed new ones. In weeks. Westinghouse’s engineers built an entirely different bulb just to get around Edison’s patent. I’d be annoyed at the inconvenience but honestly it was a little bit funny watching Edison try to sabotage us and then having to watch us simply solve the problem and move on.
On the opening night, the President of the United States pressed a button, and the entire White City lit up at once.
It’s 1893. Most of the people attending this fair have never seen an electric light in their life. Many of them still use candles. And suddenly — all at once — over 100,000 lights turn on. The palaces, the fountains, the towers, the waterways. Everything glowing white against the night sky. People screamed. People wept. A woman near me grabbed her husband’s arm and said she thought she was looking at heaven.
I did that. My system. The thing I designed in my head while standing in a ditch in Manhattan.
27 million people came to the fair that summer. Every single one of them walked through a city powered by Alternating Current. They didn’t think about dead dogs. They didn’t think about electric chairs. They thought about how beautiful it was.
During the fair, I gave a demonstration on stage. Edison had spent years telling the public that AC electricity would kill anyone who touched it. So I stood in front of a live audience, turned on my generators, and ran Alternating Current through my own body. Electricity passed through me and lit up glass tubes I was holding in my hands. I was glowing. The audience was completely silent. Nobody breathed. And I was perfectly fine.
Edison told the world my invention was death. I held it in my hands and turned it into light.
There was no argument left after that. Not the newspaper stories, not the dead animals, not the electric chair — none of it mattered anymore. 27 million people saw the future with their own eyes, and it wasn’t Edison’s.
I’m writing this from my hotel in Chicago. It’s late and the fair is still glowing outside my window. I can see it from here. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, and I built it.
Five years ago I had four cents in my pocket.
More soon. I have bigger plans.
— Nikola
