Inventions & Discoveries · Energy and power
Alternating current
Alternating current is an electric current that periodically reverses direction, the form in which electric power is delivered to homes and businesses. The French instrument maker Hippolyte Pixii built the first alternator to produce it in 1832, on Michael Faraday's principles. In 1885 Károly Zipernowsky, Ottó Bláthy and Miksa Déri of the Ganz Works in Budapest patented closed-core transformers, and their system of 75 transformers supplied 1,067 lamps at the Hungarian National Exhibition that May. Westinghouse then built AC systems across the United States, and the first three-phase system was established in Frankfurt in 1891.
On the inventions tree
- First known
- 1832
- Credited to
- Hippolyte Pixii
NotePixii's alternator came first, but alternating current became practical for power only with the transformers of the 1880s; from late 1887 Thomas Edison campaigned against it as too dangerous in the war of the currents.
See also
Cite this entry
- APA
- The Epoch Institute. (2026). Alternating current. In The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/alternating-current
- MLA
- “Alternating current.” The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia, The Epoch Institute, 2026, https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/alternating-current. Accessed .
- Chicago
- The Epoch Institute. “Alternating current.” The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. 2026. https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/alternating-current.
- Harvard
- The Epoch Institute (2026) ‘Alternating current’, The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. Available at: https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/alternating-current (Accessed: ).
Last reviewed October 2026Random entry ↻