The big "Clash of the Titans" dispute of Nikola Tesla's career was between his alternating current and Thomas Edison's direct current. In a nutshell, what the two men were arguing about was a method of creating and distributing electricity. Direct current was already in place, but it could not be transmitted as far as alternating could be (requiring the construction of many more power plants), couldn't be converted to higher or lower voltages as easily (requiring extensive indoor wiring and transformers), and, because it had to be transmitted at higher voltages, was more dangerous.
However, all of these factors made it economically advantageous to Edison if the country was wired completely with direct current, and so he whipped up a serious smear campaign to make the country believe that alternating current would cause autism be very dangerous. He demonstrated this fact by electrocuting a number of animals to death using alternating current, including an elephant. Disturbing video here. Of course, the outcome would have been the same regardless of the method of delivering the electricity. Edison's campaign led pretty directly to the invention of execution by electrocution.
Fortunately the cheapness and utility of AC eventually won out over Edison's fear-mongering. But despite it's epicness, the War of Currents was a win for Tesla. The inventor's biggest loss in scientific credit was to Guglielmo Marconi over radio. Marconi's success at creating a device that could transmit radio waves for wireless communication seems to largely have been because he cribbed from the work of other contemporary scientists like Tesla and Heinrich Hertz. Despite this, the patent for radio communication was stripped from Tesla and awarded to Marconi in 1904. Despite appeals, and a certain come-hither look, Tesla was not able to get it back while he was alive. The US supreme court eventually upheld his patent claim within the year after his death.
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