Tesla: Master of Lightning Page #2

system that drives our civilization.

Early electric motors operated

on direct current electricity

but required a system of

sparking connections to induce

a rotary effect in the machine.

I remarked to my professor that

the design of generators and motors

could be greatly improved by

using currents that alternated.

He embarrassed me, greatly,

in front of my classmates saying:

Mr. Tesla will never accomplish this,

it is a perpetual-motion scheme.

Meanwhile, in America,

Thomas Alva Edison

had begun to experiment

with vacuum tubes,

producing the first commercial

incandescent light bulb in 1878.

Edison and Tesla would soon cross paths

in a gargantuan technological struggle

between direct and alternating

current electricity.

In 1880 Tesla moved to Budapest

where he found employment with

the central telegraph office.

Here his idea for an AC

motor began to haunt him.

In my room, I could hear the

ticking of a watch

with three rooms between

me and the timepiece.

A carriage passing at a distance of a

few miles fairly shook my whole body.

The whistle of a distant locomotive

vibrated so strongly in my ears

that the pain was unbearable.

To recover from these attacks, I

took long walks in the city park.

One afternoon, which is ever-

present in my recollection,

the sun was just setting

and reminded me of Goethe's

glorious passage:

The glow retreats

done is the day of toil...

Upon its track to follow

follow soaring.

As I uttered these inspiring

words, the idea came to me

like a lightning flash.

I felt to my knees

and drew a diagram

in the ground.

Tesla perceived a

whirling field of energy.

He suddenly knew he could

recreate this rotating field

by powering the coils of a

motor in different steps or phases

like the pistons of an engine.

The resulting forces of magnetic

attraction and repulsion

would literally twist

the rotor in a circle,

the electrical equivalent of the wheel.

And all this was accomplished

with alternating currents.

It would soon turn the wheels

of industry around the world.

The strength of Tesla's mind

was almost certainly in his

sense of visualization,

to be able to see things

move in front of him.

You see, It was not a

perpetual-motion scheme.

It had been the height of my ambition

and my most ardent wish

to see America

and come in contact with

the great Thomas Edison.

Accordingly, I undertook the voyage

and, after losing my money and tickets,

and passing through a series of mishaps,

including a mutiny in which

I almost lost my life,

I landed on these blessed shores

with four cents in my pocket.

Tesla arrived in New York

on June 6th, 1884.

A 28-year-old immigrant,

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