In
1882, Tesla moved to Paris, France, and began
work for
the Continental Edison Company. He designed improvements to Edison's DC
electrical equipment. After a couple of years, Tesla's former employer
Charles Batchelor,
wrote a letter of recommendation to Thomas Edison which stated "I know
two
great men and you are one of them; the other is this young man."[02]
Tesla
moved to the US in 1884, he arrived in New York with nothing but four
cents in
his pocket, some computations, an idea of a flying machine, and his
recommendation from Charles Batchelor.
S.S.
Saturnia, the ship which brought Nikola Tesla from Europe to New York
Harbor,
1884.
http://www.teslasociety.com/photos.htm
Edison hired Tesla as an engineer
under "Edison Machine Works". During this time, Tesla was in the
midst of discovering AC current and tried to promote the idea to
Edison. Edison
didn't clearly understand the concepts and began seeing the idea as
competition
to his DC equipment. After a short time of working under Edison, Tesla
was
offered $50,000 (approximately $1.2 million today adjusted to
inflation) to
redesign Edison's DC generators. Tesla was very poor at the time, so
this offer
appealed heavily to him. He worked tirelessly day and night for several
months,
creating many new patents in the process. After some time, Tesla
confronted
Edison about the money, "When you become a full-fledged American, you
will
appreciate an American joke," Edison replied. Edison offered a raise,
but
Tesla was so shocked that he immediately left the company.
Tesla worked in manual labor, digging ditches from
1886 to
1887. In 1887, the Western Union Company discovered Tesla's genius and
offered
to invest in his idea for the AC motor. The company gave him a small
laboratory
and all the resources he needed. While working at this lab, Tesla
succesfully
built his AC induction motor along with all of its components. "The
motors
I
build
there,"
said
Tesla,
"were
exactly as I imagined them.
I made no attempt to improve the design, but merely reproduced the
pictures as
they appeared to my vision and the operation was always as I expected."
[01] The
patents that were published throughout this time were so original and
contained
no challenges or issues, that some say they were the most valuable
since the
invention of the telephone. George Westinghouse, of the Westinghouse
Corporation, offered Tesla $60,000 for his patents and an additional
$2.50 for
every horsepower of electrical capacity sold through the use of AC.
Tesla
agreed to the offers and used his newfound fortune to build a larger
laboratory.
