????師傅受到慢待，會比地獄之火還要可怕。1884年，舉世聞名的發明家托馬斯?愛迪生在他的紐約辦公室和一位才華橫溢的年輕工程師見了面，后者名叫尼古拉?特斯拉。他來自塞爾維亞，此前幾年一直在愛迪生的巴黎分公司研究直流電。當時，愛迪生的直流電設備處于主宰地位。但特斯拉想出了一個新方法來使用交流電。和直流電不同，交流電可以長距離輸送大量電力。據特斯拉稱，愛迪生直斥他的想法是浪費時間，更別提使用高壓電所具有的危險性。

????特斯拉為愛迪生設計出了幾款產品，期待著后者能兌現給他5萬美元獎金【約相當于今天的100萬美元（627萬元人民幣）】的承諾。但特斯拉在1885年春天提及此事時，愛迪生卻告訴他那只不過是個玩笑。特斯拉隨即辭職。

????特斯拉開始自立門戶，還獲得了專利，甚至引起了匹茲堡工業大亨喬治?威斯丁豪斯的注意。威斯丁豪斯一直在悄悄地開發交流發電站。了解了特斯拉的技術后，威斯丁豪斯收購了他的專利，用西屋（Westinghouse）公司的力量為特斯拉提供支持。大戰接踵而至。

????聽到威斯丁豪斯涉足電力行業的消息，愛迪生哂笑不已。但很快，愛迪生就開始用令眾人吃驚的演示來貶低交流電。為了讓別人相信他的話，愛迪生電死了一些狗、牛和馬，甚至還有一頭大象。隨后，他又倡導把交流電用在美國第一把執行死刑的電椅上。首例電椅死刑于1890年8月在紐約奧伯恩執行。這次死刑歷時8分鐘，而且嘗試了兩次才完成，場面極為可怖。對此，威斯丁豪斯只是冷冷地回應說：“用斧子執行都比這個強?！?/p>

????最終，特斯拉的交流電技術獲得了勝利，而直流電和交流電之爭成了美國歷史上最重要的企業戰爭之一。1892年，愛迪生通用電氣公司（Edison General Electric）和湯姆森-休斯頓電氣公司（Thomson-Houston）強強聯手，由它們合并而成的通用電氣（GE）處處和威斯丁豪斯為敵。愛迪生和特斯拉辭世之后的很長一段時間里，兩人的宿怨依然未消。直到20世紀80年代，通用電氣正確地選擇了杰克?韋爾奇擔任首席執行官，威斯丁豪斯卻在繼任者問題上連犯了四次錯誤。20世紀90年代末，通用電氣成為世界上價值最高的公司。而原來的西屋公司則已不復存在，現在這家同名公司的規模還不到通用電氣的十分之一。

????獲勝者：尼古拉?特斯拉（財富中文網）

????Hell hath no fury like a mentor scorned. In 1884 world-renowned inventor Thomas Edison welcomed a brilliant young Serbian engineer named Nikola Tesla into his New York office. Tesla had been working on direct current (DC) electricity in Edison's Paris division for a few years. Edison's DC apparatus reigned supreme at the time. But Tesla had conceived of a new method using alternating current (AC), which, unlike DC, could transmit significant amounts of power over long distances. According to Tesla, Edison dismissed his ideas as a waste of time, not to mention dangerous given the high voltage involved.

????Tesla designed several products for Edison, expecting to receive a promised $50,000 bonus for his efforts (about $1 million today). But when Tesla asked for his reward in the spring of 1885, Edison told him it had been a joke all along. Tesla quit.

????He struck out on his own, securing patents and catching the interest of Pittsburgh industrial titan George Westinghouse. Westinghouse had been quietly developing power stations using AC. Learning of Tesla's technology, he acquired his patents, putting the business might of the Westinghouse corporation behind the inventor. And the war came.

????When he heard that Westinghouse was moving into the electricity business, Edison ridiculed him. But it wasn't long before Edison was holding shocking public demonstrations to discredit AC power. To make his point, he electrocuted dogs, cows, horses, even an elephant. He then put his name behind an effort to use AC to power the first electric chair. The execution -- which took place in Auburn, N.Y., in August 1890, lasted eight minutes and required two attempts -- was a grisly affair. Westinghouse responded dryly, "They could have done it better with an axe."

????Ultimately Tesla's AC technology won the war, but the inventors' rivalry morphed into one of the greatest corporate battles in American history. A mega-merger of Edison General Electric and Thomson-Houston in 1892 created GE (GE, Fortune 500), which went toe-to-toe with Westinghouse. Long after Edison and Tesla died, their feud carried on until, in the 1980s, GE chose the right CEO (Jack Welch), while Westinghouse chose four successive wrong ones. By the late 1990s, GE was the most valuable company on earth. The original Westinghouse was no more; the current company with that name is less than one-tenth GE's size.

????Winner:Nikola Tesla