Tesla: Master of Lightning Page #3

he was filled with dreams of

success in this strange new land.

In his pocket he carried a letter of

recommendation from Charles Batchelor,

one of Edison's associates in Europe.

My dear Edison,

I know two great men

and you are one of them.

The other is this young man.

Tesla came to America

because he had tried

to get his alternating current

motor produced in Germany

and, I believe, in France

as well, without any success.

And he realized that there was

probably only one person in the world

who could help him with it

and that was Thomas Edison.

New York had had electricity

since the late 1870s.

Edison installed his first DC

power station on Pearl Street

near the financial district in 1882.

He did this with help from the great

Wall Street financier J. Pierpont Morgan.

But the system was far from perfect.

Electricity was a very new thing;

most people didn't understand

what it was all about.

They were very afraid of it.

There were fires breaking out.

The horses on the streets

would get shocks through

their shoes and run away.

So it was a very exciting

time for Edison.

I was thrilled to the marrow

meeting Edison.

This great man had revolutionized

the world with his incandescent lamp.

And I was burning to show him

my motor

that ran on alternating currents.

Edison had built his business

on the direct current system

and any talk of alternating

currents was an aggravation to him.

The problem with direct current is

that you can't change the voltage.

What you'd generate,

that's what you'd get.

And if you generated the

power at too high a voltage,

you would blow out lamps

at the other end.

If you generate at the

proper power for the lamps

and you want to go any

great distance,

then you need copper wire

that's as thick as your arm.

and the Edison people said:

Well, that's all right,

well just have a power

station every mile or so.

DC was sufficient to power

lights and run motors

but it could not be transmitted

efficiently over long distances.

By raising and lowering the voltage

AC could solve the

problem of distance

but a working AC motor

did not exist.

In spite of their differences

Edison hired Tesla to improve the

performance of his DC generators.

Tesla said he was promised

$50,000 if he was successful.

The offer seemed too good

to be true.

I entered the Edison Machine Works

where I undertook the design

of DC dynamos and motors.

My regular hours were from

10:
30 am till 5:00 am the next day.

When I completed the task

I went to Edison for payment

and he laughed.

Edison was very amused by this

and said:
You just don't understand

our American sense of humor, Mr. Tesla.

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