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1888, Manhattan.
Thomas Edison’s engineers were celebrating. They’d just wired the entire financial district with their proven DC electrical system.
Every electrical engineer followedEdison’s standards: 110V DC, distributed through local power stations every few miles, thick copper cables, and proven safety protocols.
The Institute of Electrical Engineers had effectively endorsed DC as the only viable approach. Anyone suggesting alternatives was labeled reckless or incompetent.
Elsewhere, George Westinghouse hired a young Serbian engineer named Nikola Tesla who proposed something heretical: alternating current that constantly reversed direction.
Tesla’s AC system violated every established electrical standard. It used “dangerous” high voltages, required complex transformers, and transmitted power over impossible distances. Edison’s engineers called it a death trap waiting to happen.
Tesla ignored every safety standard and engineering convention.
While Edison’s team optimized within DC constraints, Tesla questioned the fundamental assumption that electricity should flow in one direction. He built transformers that stepped up for transmission and down for consumption; which violated the “stable voltage” doctrine. His system could transmit power hundreds of miles, making Edison’s neighborhood power stations obsolete overnight.
Standards aren’t neutral guidelines, they’re crystallized assumptions from the past.
The most dangerous moment comes with success, when you begin to believe your own standards are universal truths.
The biggest breakthroughs come from engineers who treat industry standards as starting points to violate, not rules to follow.
Innovation starts with informed rebellion.
In the end, every electrical grid on Earth uses Tesla’s “reckless” AC system. Edison’s standards-compliant DC system became a historical footnote. Sometimes the best engineering solution makes current standards obsolete.
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