If Edison and Tesla got in a fight, who would win?

Like now, The showman would win , but the one who should win , would be the true scientist and real genius, Tesla!

Tesla would totally mop the floor with Edison.

There's a reason why Edison hired Tesla at the beginning - Tesla was smarter and better.

Do not get me wrong, I think Tesla did think out side of the box. But who won was Westinghouse.
You can not compare Edison, Tesla, and Westinghouse.
If Edison was so wrong, why is all and I mean all electronic equipment DC. Think about it the computer you are using now works because of one man, Edison.
Still we would not have AC without Westinghouse.
The Tesla coil would not have worked, to supply you house of office with electric. Birds and planes would not had a chance.
They all three added to the history of electric.

DC was the original electrical format know to man from ages, Edison was more of a promoter (or advantage taker) of other people's ideas, while Tesla created everything (AC, etc.) from scratch. There is no discussion about who is the greatest. the brightest scientist between them.

I am an Electrical Engineer and I know what I am talking about, I researched years ago the history of both as part of my fascination with my career.

I admire both as great inventors, yet very different in their approach to creativity.
Edison and Tesla used different mental skills. Edison was very methodical and systematic, but more trial and error. Tesla was an alien from another planet...nah, just kidding. To be real, Tesla had an amazing ability to visualize the shape, motion and interrelationship of highly complex concepts. Tesla mentally went where no had ever been. Edison mentally moved ideas to there logical result.

It is a bit of an unfair contest. Edison was a technician, organizer (and some say thief) of other folks discoveries. At one point he reverse engineered the telephone and tried to steal the patents from Alexander Graham Bell. Fortunately Bell's father-in-law, a wealthy industrialist, had some very sharp lawyers (with very sharp teeth) who took care of that little bit arrogance. Tesla was a theoretical scientist a physicist and an under-appreciated genius. The effects of his discoveries are far-reaching and the full impact of most of them are yet to be realized. (Read "Electric Universe" by David Bodanis for more of this seminal time in the history of electricity and the people who energized the industrial revolution.)

Both were geniuses but Tesla worked relatively alone, Edison had an an army of people to complete his ideas.

it is crazy to compare AC vs DC (tesla vs edison) - your ipod runs on DC, the AC current you plug your computer and monitor into has a power supply that immediately converts the AC current into DC that everything electronic runs on, etc etc.

Tesla was a 100% genious - edison said genious is 1% brilliance and 99% sweat. They both got results that we still use today -- only from different directions.

If Tesla had won we´d probably had free electricity... It would have been so cool! Remember Tesla put the basis for an experiment using radiomagnetic waves to induce electricity all over Manhattan from a station at top of the Empire State Building. As always like in the Bailout thing money rules!

Tesla wins on the basis of long distance power transmission. As I recall, Edison's solution was something like a DC power plant on every block in urban areas. Talk about NIMBY problems.... And forget about power in rural areas (before the time of wind and solar power). My grandparents told me of living in the country without AC, and having to travel to the city every week or so just to purchase batteries for the radio.

Without relatively cheap reliable power coming into your home, all of your DC-internal equipment (iPod, computer, TV, etc) is relatively dead without a lot of legwork on your part.

Edison would hardly understand Tesla's way of thinking.

Tesla would stomp a mudhole in Edison and walk it dry. After he walked it dry, he would spit on it to wet it and walk it dry again. I would know, I am an electrical engineer.

Zhivio Serbia!

They did get in a fight. Edison fired him, then did everything he could to discredit him. Edison even went so far as to electrocute live animals (e.g. elephants, as well as stray dogs) to prove that alternating current was unsafe.
Edison was one of my heroes growing up, but when I read what he had done during the "electrification wars" to Tesla, I became disappointed in him.
As I studied Tesla over the years, I became convinced that he was years ahead of his time, at first a hundred, now maybe, I think, even a thousand. One day we will see that worldwide wireless transmission of power (and communication on the same carrier wave) has been doable all along; it just wasn't commercially viable. Sometimes being a great scientist doesn't mean you're a great businessman; Edison was, Tesla wasn't. Google Wardenclyffe.

Tesla is something out of a movie, the guy was so far ahead of his time then, I would love to take him to this time, with our level of technology, and see what he would cook up.

Yeah, I'm going to have to come down on the Tesla side. This wasn't about who was a better promoter or smoother operator (probably Edison - he even stole ideas from from Homer Simpson), or who was smarter and/or a better inventor (Tesla). It was about who win in a fight. Tesla had a lot of reach, and it was far more likely that he had something sharp up a sleeve or two, perhaps attached to a battery. Edison's only choice would be to get Tesla to the ground and wear him down.

Fight Club: "Skinny guys fight 'til they're hamburger." I think that was the quote...

jf

Before I was 14, it would have been Edison, but after reading 2 books on the Tesla and 'battle' between the two... It's Tesla- by a mile.

My favorite story that is told in a few of the books, was this box that people could sit on to cure constipation. How could a box cure constipation? When you are Nikola Tesla, you discover the sine wave of peristalsis (the body constant wave that helps your body digest and eliminate). Then create a motor that has the same intervals of cyclical rotation and blammo!...

Edison wouldn't have 'wasted time' on something like that, he couldn't market it. Tesla's invention or even experiments were seen as trite to TommyBoy. Until he really had something and then he always beat him to the patent office. There are many accounts of Tesla inventing and Edison patenting.

As others have noted, Edison was by far the better business man. Tesla was by far the better scientist. Edison was far more practical. Tesla was visionary. But if the 2 had to go fisty-cuff to settle who'd kick who's tail. Tesla would probably not have the physicality to take Edison in fight. Unless he used his Yeti mind bullets.

Edison didn't merely kill kittens. A film documents his electrocuting of an elephant in the middle of New York City to prove his point. His stubbornness left some countries dotted with small generator stations, which are mostly art galleries and workshops, so something good came of his works. Much is claimed that he was a bully, not just an opportunist. Some evidence exists that he instigated murders. Without a doubt, his London film distribution company outright stole original films, even footage that had not yet been edited, from moviemaking pioneers in Europe and, ignoring protests if not badgering anybody who complained, he sold and distributed these as his own and gave no compensation to the true owners. If Edison's mere abilities to promote things (even though wrong) is justification for his fame and glory in history, then for promoting liquor, beer and drugs, many figures of organized crime ought to stand shoulder to shoulder with him!

TESLA WOULD WIN LIKE HE HAS IN THE PAST.

Just to get the record on Edison straight, he demonstrated how dangerous AC could be by electrocuting kittens, cats, stray dogs etc that the neighborhood boys in Menlo Park brought him. Then, when New York decided that a better means of executing criminals than hanging was needed, he tried to get a new Westinghouse (Tesla AC generator) to use for this. Westinghouse would not sell him one, so he bought a used one. The first demonstration of this new means of execution went badly, it took 5 or 6 jolts and they ended up literally frying the condemned man. As George Westinghouse commented "They should have used an axe". Edison immediately declared the criminal had been "Westinghoused", but despite his best efforts, the press settled on "electrocution".

Tesla is fascinating but his history is notoriously exagerated (by himself as much as anyone). His most important invention was 3-phase power and electric motors that run off it. The high-voltage high-frequency experiments looked cool but never produced anything practical. He had a scheme for sending power without wires, but he was in way over his head -- Tesla didn't even believe in radio waves, he really didn't understand the physics.

Edison was a total S.O.B., no doubt he did electrocute kittens and hire thugs to beat up people who made movies without paying him patent royalties. That said, he was far more productive and pragmatic than Tesla. He created hundreds of basic inventions (phonograph, light bulb, motion picture camera, etc) and started a highly successful company.

An LED is a miniature Edison light bulb. No match for a Tesla miniature coil, a TASER.!!!

Neither Tesla or Edison had anything to do with todays electric grid. Stienmetz worked out all the circuitry and math for the AC electric grid.

Computers and electronics use both DC and AC. DC is used mostly for power and bias. All signals. computations and work is done with periodic signals.

Tesla would win!