TOM MCNICHOL is a contributing editor for "Wired" magazine. His articles have appeared in the "New York Times, Salon," the "Washington Post," and the "Guardian." His radio commentaries and satires have aired on NPR's "All Things Considered, Morning Edition," and "Marketplace." He's the author of "Barking at Prozac" (Crown Publishing, 1997), and his work appears in the anthology "Afterwords: Stories and Reports from 9/11 and Beyond" (Washington Square Press, 2002).
Long before there was VHS versus Betamax, Windows versus Macintosh, or Blu-Ray versus HD-DVD, the first and nastiest standards war was fought between alternating current (AC) and direct current (DC). AC/DC tells the little-known story of how Thomas Ed...[SEE MORE]