Recently I was working on a residential electrical panel and a question came to mind that I haven’t been able to find an answer for. “Cecil and the gang will know this for sure.” I thought, so this one of the teeming millions decided to squeek out: Why is an Edison Circuit (two 120VAC lines out of phase by 180 degrees and one normal line) called that? From what I have read and heard, Edison with his DC had it out for Tesla’s AC and went to great lengths to discredit Tesla. Edison was electrocuting various animals with AC at large fairs to ‘prove’ that AC was more dangerous than DC! Why would an AC circuit style be named after him?
Well, he was still pioneer in the field, just not that particular area of the field. Likely the person who named the circuit worked with AC equipment, but still admired Edison’s accomplishments.
I thought it was Westinghouse.
Westinghouse was financially backing Tesla, but Tesla was the brains.
A little background from some of what I have read:
Both were pretty egotistical.
Edison had originally hired Tesla when he came from his home country. After working in Edison’s thinktank and improving on several of Edison’s devices, Edison put it to Tesla to improve the efficiency of Edison’s electric motors. Edison promised if Tesla could improve efficiency by (forgetting the number) 30%(?) he would give him $50,000. Tesla did it and Edison was furious, he thought the task was impossible. Edison reneged and refused to give Tesla the money. So Tesla left and found back from various others, including Westinghouse.
Edison spent alot of time afterward trying to discredit Tesla’s accomplishments.
PBS made a pretty good documentary on Tesla recently.
Are you sure you aren’t thinking of Edison socket? That’s the common, medium base bulb socket we still use.
An Edison Socket is a standard lightbulb socket.
No, there are a couple ways to get 240VAC at a location. 240 VAC 3-phase is one that is popular for commercial scale. On that, you have 4 lines: three ‘hot’ 120VAC lines that are 120degrees out of phase from each other and a normal. At most residences they use an Edison circuit. For that there are 3 lines: two ‘hot’ 120VAC lines that are 180degrees out of phase from each other and a normal. Effectively 240VAC 2-phase, but nobody ever calls it that. They just say Edison circuit.
The 240VAC people have in their homes for running dryers is actually two 120VAC lines splitting the load on seperate phases.
I think the earlier guy had it. Maybe the guy who proposed this kind of circuit liked Edison but didn’t know the history between Edison and Tesla. Also that Tesla is the one we really have to credit for having AC power the worldover.
No, that would be 208 VAC L-N (which is occassionally seen in residential installations). In a 3-phase circuit where the phases are 120 [sup]o[/sup] apart, the L-N voltage = L-L x SQRT(3). Additionally, not all 3-phase circuits have a neutral. The balanced wye circuit uses a neutral which is common to all three phases. The unbalanced delta circuit does not employ a neutral line.
It isn’t. It’s a single phase. It only looks like two phases in a ground-referenced system. If you reference your system from one of the legs, it looks just like a single-phase 240 V circuit, which it is. The neutral is only included to proved a 120 VAC circuit for the electronic control portion of the appliance and other sub circuits which are better suited to 120 V operation.
Great! A true electrician! 
Personally, I duff around and read some but obviously haven’t been trained.
Ok, thanks for the clarification. Can you shed any light (pun intended) on the why it was named an Edison circuit?
I wasn’t sure, either, so I did a little searching around. It appears to be a holdover from Edison’s original three-wire, shared neutral DC circuit:
From here. There’s a good overview of some of the topics I touched on in my post earlier, as well.
Thanks! An answer at last! You have eradicated my ignorance! 
WAG: Because household circuits are serviced by companies with names like “Continental Edison”?
I’m not sure that Edison hated AC aside from the commercial aspect. He owned and operated electrical distributing companies that peddled DC so he bad-mouthed AC.
And besides, that wouldn’t stop someone else from calling the two hot, one neutral circuit and “Edison circuit.” Maybe rubbing it in to Edison a little since AC became the standard that even Tomas A. used every day.
After all the term “Big Bang” was orginated by astronomer Fred Hoyle as a derisive comment on the theory by George Gamow and others about th initial event. The originators of the theory liked it so well they turned it back on its originator.