Скачать или смотреть How Did Nikola Tesla invent the induction motor||Thought process and imagination|| Current War

Nikola Tesla, having travelled to America in 1884 with just four cents in his pocket, started out working at Edison Machine Works improving DC generators. He proved good at it, once staying up all night to repair the dynamos on the ocean liner SS Oregon. Like Edison, he worked long hours, slept little and had an unquenchable drive to innovate. But Tesla always believed the future of distributing electricity relied on AC, and left the job after Edison rejected his ideas as “splendid”, but “utterly impractical”.

An undeterred Tesla spent the next few years raising money for his own laboratory, including a stint digging ditches for Edison’s wires, and developing an AC system. His induction motor used a game-changing polyphase current (AC flowed in waves, so this filled in the ‘troughs’ with multiple voltages) to generate a rotating magnetic field (meaning fewer mechanical parts to maintain). Tesla had the ideas, but not the capital and business knowhow.

A Pittsburgh industrialist named George Westinghouse had both. Unlike his competitor Edison, who enjoyed his celebrity, Westinghouse kept himself private and did not like having his photograph taken. He was a savvy businessman, having made his fortune on the railroad, and immediately recognised the importance of Tesla’s work to his own ambitions for AC. As well as offering Tesla a job as a consultant, Westinghouse bought the patents for $60,000 in cash or stock and $2.50 for each horsepower of electricity sold – all worth millions today.

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