Experiments with Alternate Currents of High Potential and High Frequency | Page 2

but reluctant sire to send him to Gratz in
Austria to finish his studies at the Polytechnic School, and to prepare
for work as professor of mathematics and physics. At Gratz he saw and
operated a Gramme machine for the first time, and was so struck with
the objections to the use of commutators and brushes that he made up
his mind there and then to remedy that defect in dynamo-electric
machines. In the second year of his course he abandoned the intention
of becoming a teacher and took up the engineering curriculum. After
three years of absence he returned home, sadly, to see his father die; but,
having resolved to settle down in Austria, and recognizing the value of
linguistic acquirements, he went to Prague and then to Buda-Pesth with
the view of mastering the languages he deemed necessary. Up to this
time he had never realized the enormous sacrifices that his parents had
made in promoting his education, but he now began to feel the pinch
and to grow unfamiliar with the image of Francis Joseph I. There was
considerable lag between his dispatches and the corresponding
remittance from home; and when the mathematical expression for the
value of the lag assumed the shape of an eight laid flat on its back, Mr.
Tesla became a very fair example of high thinking and plain living, but
he made up his mind to the struggle and determined to go through
depending solely on his own resources. Not desiring the fame of a
faster, he cast about for a livelihood, and through the help of friends he
secured a berth as assistant in the engineering department of the
government telegraphs. The salary was five dollars a week. This
brought him into direct contact with practical electrical work and ideas,
but it is needless to say that his means did not admit of much

experimenting. By the time he had extracted several hundred thousand
square and cube roots for the public benefit, the limitations, financial
and otherwise, of the position had become painfully apparent, and he
concluded that the best thing to do was to make a valuable invention.
He proceeded at once to make inventions, but their value was visible
only to the eye of faith, and they brought no grist to the mill. Just at this
time the telephone made its appearance in Hungary, and the success of
that great invention determined his career, hopeless as the profession
had thus far seemed to him. He associated himself at once with
telephonic work, and made various telephonic inventions, including an
operative repeater; but it did not take him long to discover that, being
so remote from the scenes of electrical activity, he was apt to spend
time on aims and results already reached by others, and to lose touch.
Longing for new opportunities and anxious for the development of
which he felt himself possible, if once he could place himself within
the genial and direct influences of the gulf streams of electrical thought,
he broke away from the ties and traditions of the past, and in 1881
made his way to Paris. Arriving in that city, the ardent young Likan
obtained employment as an electrical engineer with one of the largest
electric lighting companies. The next year he went to Strasburg to
install a plant, and on returning to Paris sought to carry out a number of
ideas that had now ripened into inventions. About this time, however,
the remarkable progress of America in electrical industry attracted his
attention, and once again staking everything on a single throw, he
crossed the Atlantic.
Mr. Tesla buckled down to work as soon as he landed on these shores,
put his best thought and skill into it, and soon saw openings for his
talent. In a short while a proposition was made to him to start his own
company, and, accepting the terms, he at once worked up a practical
system of arc lighting, as well as a potential method of dynamo
regulation, which in one form is now known as the "third brush
regulation." He also devised a thermo-magnetic motor and other
kindred devices, about which little was published, owing to legal
complications. Early in 1887 the Tesla Electric Company of New York
was formed, and not long after that Mr. Tesla produced his admirable
and epoch-marking motors for multiphase alternating currents, in

which, going back to his ideas of long ago, he evolved machines having
neither commutator nor brushes. It will be remembered that about the
time that Mr. Tesla brought out his motors, and read his thoughtful
paper before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, Professor
Ferraris, in Europe, published his discovery of principles analogous to
those enunciated by Mr. Tesla. There is no doubt, however, that Mr.
Tesla was an independent