Alternating Current Quotes (5 quotes)
I have always consistently opposed high-tension and alternating systems of electric lighting, not only on account of danger, but because of their general unreliability and unsuitability for any general system of distribution.
In 'The Dangers of Electric Lighting', North American Review (Nov 1889), 149, No. 396, 633.
Just as certain as death, Westinghouse will kill a customer within six months after he puts in a [alternating current] system of any size.
Found in Jonathan R. T. Hughes, The Vital Few: American Economic Progress and Its Protagonists (1965), 194. The author did not use quotation marks, or footnote any source, but did skip to the next line and use indented lines, when he stated Edison’s stubborn (and rather malicious) opposition to alternating current for home service. [Webmaster, as yet, has not found any earlier use of these words attributed to Edison, and is therefore fairly skeptical, and doubts that this is a verbatim quote, because it seems to have no earlier provenance. But this book may have been used by others to repeat these words as a quote. For example, without citation, in Isaac Asimov, Isaac Asimov's Book of Science and Nature Quotations (1988), 71. Can you help identify a primary source?]
Most American homes have alternating current, which means that the electricty goes in one direction for a while, then goes in the other direction. This prevents harmful electron buildup in the wires.
In The Taming of the Screw: How to Sidestep Several Million Homeowner’s Problems (1983), 12.
The alternating current will kill people, of course. So will gunpowder, and dynamite, and whisky, and lots of other things; but we have a system whereby the deadly electricity of the alternating current can do no harm unless a man is fool enough to swallow a whole dynamo.
(1884). As quoted in Francis Ellington Leupp, George Westinghouse: His Life and Achievements (1918), 149.
There is no plea which will justify the use of high-tension and alternating currents, either in a scientific or a commercial sense. They are employed solely to reduce investment in copper wire and real estate.
In 'The Dangers of Electric Lighting', North American Review (Nov 1889), 149, No. 396, 633.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
