Early Life
Training for an engineering career, he attended the Technical University at Graz,
Austria, and the University of Prague. At Graz he first saw the Gramme dynamo,
which operated as a generator and, when reversed, became an electric motor,
and he conceived a way to use alternating current to advantage. Later, at Budapest,
he visualized the principle of the rotating magnetic field and developed plans for
an induction motor that would become his first step toward the successful utilization
of alternating current. In 1882 Tesla went to work in Paris for the Continental Edison Company,
and, while on assignment to Strassburg in 1883, he constructed, after work hours, his first induction motor.
Tesla sailed for America in 1884, arriving in New York with four cents in his pocket, a few of his own poems,
and calculations for a flying machine. He first found employment with Thomas Edison, but the two inventors
were far apart in background and methods, and their separation was inevitable.
In May 1888 George Westinghouse, head of the Westinghouse Electric Company in Pittsburgh,
bought the patent rights to Tesla’s polyphase system of alternating-current dynamos, transformers,
and motors. The transaction precipitated a titanic power struggle between Edison’s direct-current
systems and the Tesla-Westinghouse alternating-current approach, which eventually won out.
Tesla soon established his own laboratory, where his inventive mind could be given free rein.
He experimented with shadowgraphs similar to those that later were to be used by Wilhelm Röntgen
when he discovered X-rays in 1895. Tesla’s countless experiments included work on a carbon button
lamp, on the power of electrical resonance, and on various types of lighting.
