After leaving Edison's Company, Tesla had hard time finding work. For almost a year he worked as a labour digging ditches for Edison's underground cables but he was still determined to develop his AC motor. Tesla opened a laboratory on Liberty Street with the help of some group of investors. Along with the AC motor, Tesla developed all the components of the system of AC power generation and transmission which is still used today. In November and December of 1887, Nikola Tesla filed for seven U.S. Patents in the field of polyphase AC motors and power transmission. One of the few men who understood the great potential of Tesla's inventions was the Pittsburgh industrialist George Westinghouse. He visited Tesla's laboratory and offered to purchase all the patents dealing with the alternating current system for $1 million and a royalty of 2 dollars and 50 cents for each horsepower generated by a Tesla invention.
During the late 1880s Edison began a negative media campaign to discredit the alternating current system of electricity being developed by Westinghouse and Tesla. Edison employees demonstrated the dangers of alternating current by electrocuting animals in public. They used alternating current to execute criminals. In 1892, The Edison Company and Thomson-Houston Company got together and formed a General Electric Company.
The war of currents came to a dramatic head in 1893. The Columbian Exposition in Chicago was to be the World's first fair lighted by electricity. Both General Electric Company and Westinghouse bid for the job at the fair. The bid of General Electric Company was about $1 million but bid of Westinghouse was about half a million dollars. So naturally Westinghouse Company got the job. Now Tesla had a chance to make history in Chicago. His large AC generators would supply all of the fair's electricity. On May 1st 1893, the fairgrounds exploded with brilliant tube lightning and multicolored searchlights, the most incredible display of lighting the world has ever seen.
The famous British physicist Lord Kelvin was now head of an international commission to find a way to use the power for Niagara Falls. The contract was given to Westinghouse Electric. In 1896, the system went on line and the electrical age began. The waters of the upper Niagara turned enormous water turbines connected to the shafts to the massive 5,000 horsepower generators. The current from the generators was stepped up with the transformers to 22,000 volts and sent out over long distance lines and then stepped down to light municipalities and power motors of Tesla's design.
The war of the currents was over and Tesla was the winner.
In spite of the success of AC, Westinghouse had overextended his company's resources leading to severe financial difficulties. In order to save the company Tesla tore up the royalty contract of 2 dollars and 50 cents per horse power generation.
"Invention is the most important product of man's creative brain. The ultimate purpose is the complete mastery of mind over the material world, the harnessing human nature to human needs."- Nikola Tesla.
Nikola Tesla captured the power of Niagara Falls with his alternating current system and made it possible to transmit electricity to all of America and the world. It was Tesla who patented the technology for wireless communications that is used in all radio and television broadcasting. His incredible legacy can be seen in everything from remote control to Neon and Fluorescent lighting, X-rays, guided missiles. Yet somehow history has overlooked this remarkable man. At the height of his career, Tesla was one of the most famous men in the world. His inventions helped America grow into a powerful industrial nation. His idea created billion-dollar corporations but Tesla was not practical man. Always driven toward the next great breakthrough, he failed to protect his commercial interests. In the end, others made fortune with his inventions and he wound up penniless and rejected.
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