Oh, it wasn't just elephants. He did it with dogs, monkeys, etc. This wasn't a one-time thing, he provided this "demonstration" on a variety of occasions.

All because he wanted the world to adopt his standard for electrical transmission, direct current (DC) instead of Nikola Tesla's alternating current (AC).

Tesla was a brilliant engineer and inventor. He knew EXACTLY what he was doing (though later he did get a little nutty). Edison just yelled at engineers he hired to do work for him.

I am so sad that Tesla's name has been ruined. He was wildly intelligent and though he was a prominent figure in his prime, he died broke. It's not bad enough that he went out like that, now we have a fucking clown pissing on his grave by using his name to sell his bullshit nazimobiles.

He was trying to prove that electricity was dangerous. Even at the time though a lot of people pointed out that the voltage used was not the voltage used in mains electrics so it was basically a pointless thing to do and people quite upset about the elephant. He did receive a fair amount of bad press for it.