Edison's most important contributions to modern consumer electronics are not the phonograph or incandescent light, but the central power station and something called "The Edison Effect."

The first thing you do when you buy a stereo, TV or any electronic device is plug it into a wall socket. This simple act is possible because Edison spent almost his entire fortune and risked his substantial reputation to build the Pearl Street power station in lower Manhattan in 1882.

When Edison gave the order to flip the switch on September 4, 1882, he asked that there be light, and there was light. Stores all along Fulton and Nassau streets, the editorial offices of The New York Times and the brokerage house of Drexel Morgan were lit up with Edison's incandescent light bulbs that his power station fueled. The world had changed forever.

But Edison was producing direct current, which was dangerous and difficult to transmit efficiently over long distances because it flowed only one way. An alternate method of transmitting electricity over long distances was invented by a nearly penniless Croatian immigrant named Nikola Tesla, who arrived in America after working in the Paris offices of the Continental Edison Co. (ConEd). After being rejected by Edison, Tesla developed and brought his electrical transmission scheme to George Westinghouse.

After a bitter decade-long fight between Edison and Westinghouse, a battle that accidentally resulted in the invention of the electric chair, alternating current (AC), which allowed electricity to flow bi-directionally, reigned supreme. AC remains the standard for transmitting electricity from power plants to homes and businesses around the world.