Page - 16 - in Nikola Tesla and the Graz Tech

16 Tesla was initially very impressed by Edison’s business acumen. He very quickly developed a variety of standard designs of an improved Edison dynamo, and was promised 50,000 dollars for fulfilling this task. But he was bitterly disap- pointed when he learned from Edison that this promise had been meant as a joke. For this reason he terminated his co-operation with Edison. Both men were poles apart in character. Edison was business minded, communicative and sought the company of other persons both at work and at leisure. Tesla, in contrast, was described as a neurotic loner, who allowed few people insight into his work. His few friends were mainly writers, one of whom was the Amer- ican humourist, Mark Twain. In 1887, the Tesla Electric Light Company was founded. In this company, Tesla was finally able to build the three-phase motors that he had long been think- ing about. By means of the patents which he had meanwhile applied for and been granted, Tesla had become well known, and he was invited to a lecture at the American Institute of Electrical Engineers on 16 May 1888. As a result of the lecture, which aroused great excitement, Tesla made the acquaintance of George Westinghouse, who, similar to Edison, was a well-known entrepre- neur. Tesla managed to persuade Westinghouse that the future belonged to alternating current, and not to direct current. In 1888, Tesla’s company made an agreement with the Westinghouse company. For the transfer of rights of use of his patents to Westinghouse, Tesla was not only to receive direct com- pensation, but also a share in the future plants installed by Westinghouse to a specified degree. It has been reported that the Westinghouse company could no longer meet this obligation at a later phase due to commercial dif- ficulties, and that Tesla simply destroyed the relevant contractual agree- ments in order to aid Westinghouse. In 1889, Nikola Tesla returned to New York and began experiments in a labo- ratory to develop high-frequency machines. In this year, he visited the World Exposition in Paris and also his former homeland.