War is hell, even when it’s the War of the Currents. Harold Brown’s campaign against AC turns deadly, as he conducts gruesome electrical experiments on stray dogs, and helps set the stage for New York’s first electric chair…
013 – Tesla – War of the Currents Part 1: Opening Salvo (1886-1888)
The War of the Currents begins! Edison uses every dirty trick he can think of in the struggle for DC dominance vs. the AC upstart. There can be only one (format)!
012 – Tesla – Tesla in Steel City (1889)
Did the Westinghouse engineers want Tesla to fail in Pittsburgh? He went to consult, but all Tesla found was a hornet’s nest of resentment, ego, and competing agendas. And what was Edison up to now that Westinghouse was a threat to his DC business? A current war is in the offing…
011 – Tesla – Paying the Cost to Be the Boss (1888)
You could call this episode: “Tesla: The Art of the Deal”, as we see Tesla and his business partners Peck and Brown bluff, finagle, and finally negotiate the lucrative sale of the AC motor patents to George Westinghouse. The sale changed Tesla’s life–and ours–forever.
010 – Tesla – Patent. Promote. Sell. (1887-1888)
Tesla was cranking out break-through inventions as fast as his partners could patent them. Plans to promote and sell them culminated in Tesla’s full-on arrival as a cutting edge figure in the electrical field with his groundbreaking address to the American Institute of Electrical Engineers.
009 – Tesla – How Tesla (Eventually) Got His Groove Back
Not long after Tesla stormed out on Edison opportunity came knocking again…as did further betrayal and disappointment. But with the help of new business partners, Tesla was on his way to becoming a truly world-changing figure.
008 – Tesla – A Scandalously Short History of the Gilded Age
It is the era in which Tesla made his greatest breakthroughs and inventions, and the era in which he found fame and fortune: the Gilded Age. Today, a whirlwind tour of America in the Gilded Age–its time; its big themes; and how it changed United States (and Tesla!) forever.
007 – Tesla vs Edison: Round 1
The episode you’ve all been waiting for! Tesla arrives in New York City and takes a job with Thomas Edison. See the seeds of a life-long rivalry sown because of a broken million-dollar promise. It’s Tesla vs. Edison: Round 1–let’s get ready to rummmble!
006 – Tesla – Is Paris Electrified? (1882-1884)
This week we follow Tesla to Paris and a job with the new Edison lighting company there. In Paris, Telsa gains his first real, practical exposure to the nitty-gritty of designing and building dynamos and motors, and gets a taste for just how good the good life can be.
005 – Tesla – A Walk in the Park (1882)
The solution to Tesla’s alternating current motor problem came to him as a ‘eureka’ moment during a walk in the park in 1882: the rotating magnetic field, and the induction motor. The applications of this innovation would literally change the world.