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In his letter to the Post Brown defended those who wanted to ban high-voltage overhead lines in New York, but he also opened a more general attack on alternating current. He echoed the arguments of Johnson's Warning, but he expressed them in incendiary language. Alternating current was so dangerous to human life, Brown claimed, that it could "be described by no adjective less forcible than damnable." The only reason to use it was to save on copper costs: "That is, the public must submit to constant danger from sudden death in order that a corporation may pay a little larger dividend" An alternating-current wire above a New York street, Brown warned, "is as dangerous as a burning candle in a powder factory." Brown advised New York City's Board of Electrical Control to limit the transmission of alternating current to no more than 300 volts—a restriction that would effectively ban it altogether, for without the advantages afforded by high-voltage transmission, it could not compete effectively with direct current. Brown was not troubled by this possibility, because he considered direct current far preferable: "a continuous current of'low tension,' such as is used by the Edison Company for incandescent lights, is perfectly safe."14

Manhattan's Board of Electrical Control suddenly found itself at the center of a nasty fight over electrical safety. At a July meeting of the board, defenders of alternating current—most of them employees or allies of Westinghouse—vilified Brown. One described Brown's letter as "a villainous budget of perversions of fact," while another claimed Brown was "entirely ignorant" of electrical technology. A Westinghouse vice president cited Edward Johnson's circulars and Brown's letter as evidence of the "desperation of opposition companies." Brown's attack, one critic claimed, was "made rather with a view to injuring rivals than with a purpose of protecting the 'dear public.'"15

But the critics did not stop at impugning Brown's knowledge and motives. Whereas Brown had claimed that direct current was much safer than alternating, they argued that just the opposite was true. "The alternating current," one claimed, "while disagreeable, is far less dangerous to life than a direct current of the same tension," and another insisted, "I have myself received 1,000 volts without even temporary inconvenience." As long as the current is less than 1,100 volts, one man said, "no fatality can occur, or serious inconvenience result." One electrician went so far as to claim that a shock could be good for people. When a person was felled by a lethal direct-current shock, he said, "the passage of an alternating current through the body has been very efficacious in restoring life."16

These electricians did not explain why they believed alternating current was less dangerous. Brown and his allies, on the other hand, put forth a theory to justify their stance. The dangers of electricity, they said, lay not in the current itself but in its interruptions. Direct current, flowing smoothly in one direction, did little damage, while alternating current, which changed directions many times a second, ripped and tore at the body's tissues. "It is the rapid succession of shocks that kills," Brown wrote in his letter to the Post, "while a single steady impulse of the same intensity would do little damage."17

Brown's letter and the responses to it revealed a dispute that had not yet been resolved by experimental evidence: At a given voltage, which was more dangerous, alternating current or direct?*

To prove the alternating forces wrong, Brown needed allies and equipment. "I therefore called upon Mr. Thos. A. Edison, whom I had never before met," Brown later explained, "and asked the loan of instruments for the purpose, which could not be obtained by me elsewhere. To my surprise, Mr. Edison at once invited me to make the experiments at his private laboratory."18

EDISON'S EXPERIMENT for the World reporter in June was an unsystematic demonstration, with no records kept.