TOM EDISON: The Wizard of Menlo Park, Edison's inventions included the light bulb, the phonograph and the movie camera. In 1883, Nikola Tesla began working for Edison at his lightbulb factory outside of Paris. Tesla was also a trouble shooter for Edison at many of his other European generating stations, such as in Strasbourg, Berlin and St. Petersburg. The following year, Tesla came to America to work at Edison's New York City plant. Unwilling to listen to Tesla about his invention in alternating current, Edison persisted with direct current. Even though it was a highly inferior means of distributing electrical power, Edison would not bend, and thus begun the "war of the currents" in the battle to light the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and Niagara Falls, a few years later. With such an enormous prize at stake, Edison let out all stops and was instrumental in having AC used in the electric chair. The idea he tried to convey was that Tesla's AC was so dangerous that if housewives used it, they would be electrocuted. It was for this reason that Tesla found a way to send hundreds of thousands of volts through his body to prove that AC was safe. Once AC came into being, Edison's backer, JP Morgan, kicked Edison out of his own company and formed a new company which came to be called General Electric. At the same time, Morgan negotiated secretly with George Westinghouse in order to get the rights to Tesla's AC.