During the late 1800s Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse were engaged in an intense industrial rivalry. Edison’s electrical inventions ran on DC (direct current). Westinghouse tried to convince governments and business that AC (alternating current) was the way to go for the development of large-scale power distribution systems. In their book American Entrepreneur: The Fascinating Stories of the People Who Defined Business in the United States, Larry Schweikart and Lynne Pierson Doti retell how the battle got pretty nasty.