Nikola Tesla, the Great Electrician

His Part in the Transmission of Power from Niagara.

HE MADE IT POSSIBLE

"It Can Be Done," He Said and Then Set to Work and Evolved the Apparatus — A Sketch of the Life of the Wonderful Genius.

Buffalo Commercial.

Nikola Tesla, the great electrician, to whose genius is so largely due the accomplishment of the power project, was born in 1857 in Smiljan, Lika, and is of Slavic origin. His father, according to a biography written by Tesla, was an eloquent clergyman of the Greek church. His mother was noted for her skill and originality in needlework, and, doubtless, she transmitted to her son her ingenuity.

As a boy Tesla was full of vim and pranks and fond of taking risks. On one occasion he early displayed the faculties which since have made him famous by attempting to fly with the aid of an old umbrella, and as a result of his experimenting in that line he was laid up in bed for six weeks. He was sent to the public schools in Gospic and was especially interested in arithmetic and physics. He finally was sent to an aunt in Caristatt, Croatia, where he attended what was called the Higher Real School. There he first raw a steam engine with pleasure that he recalls to-day. He accomplished a four year's course in three years, graduating in 1873.

Returning to his home he was stricken with cholera and his studies were interrupted for two years. But he devoted all the time possible to experimenting and gave his energies to electrical studies and investigations. His father's plan was to make a priest of Nikola, but the son prevailed upon him to send him to Gratz, Austria, to finish his studies at a polytechnic school and to prepare for work us a professor of mathematics and physics. There he first saw and operated a Gramme machine. He was so struck with the objections to the use of commutators and brushes that he determined to remedy the defect in dynamo-electric machines. He abandoned his intention to become a teacher and took up the engineering curriculum.

After three years' absence from home he returned home to say farewell to his father at his death. Then Tesla moved to Prague and afterwards to Buda-Pesth. He was poor and he became the personification of high thinking and plain living. He secured employment as an assistant in the engineering department of government telegraphs, which brought him in contact with practical electrical work and ideas. His first salary was $5 a week.

Not content to eke out a fragile existence, Tesla determined to make some inventions. The telephone made its appearance in Hungary and he associated himself with telephonic work. He made various telephonic inventions, including an operative repeater. Seeing that he was too remote from opportunity to develop his own powers and to make a success as he desired, Tesla in 1881 made his way to Paris, where he obtained employment as an electrical engineer with one of the largest electric lighting companies. The following year he carried out a number of his ideas which had ripened into inventions.

Again induced by unlimited possibilities and a desire to get into a large and profitable field, Tesla crossed the Atlantic and came to the United States. He saw many openings for his talent and improved them. A proposition to start his own company was accepted. Tesla worked up a practical system of are lighting as well as a potential method of dynamo regulation which in one form is known as "third-brush regulation." He devised a thermomagnetic motor and other similar devices.

Early in 1887 the Tesla Electric Company of New York was formed, and soon thereafter Tesla produced his epoch-marking motors for multiphase alternating currents, in which, going back to the defect, he discovered and determined to remedy in Gratz, the evolved machines had neither commutators nor brushes. Tesla was the inventor of the rotary field motor, although the same discovery was made about the same time by Professor Ferraris in Europe.

Tesla's work in this particular field was wonderfully timely and was greatly appreciated in various quarters. The Tesla patents were acquired by the Westinghouse Electric Company, which developed his motor and applied it to work of various kinds. The immense stimulus that was given to the study of alternate current motors would alone strap Tesla as a leader in electrical discovery.

In 1890 Tesla severed his connection with the Westinghouse company and devoted himself to the study of alternating currents of high frequencies and potentials. His achievements in that field need no comment, as they are too well known.

When the Niagara Falls Power Company wanted someone to find a way to get the power to Buffalo with the best and most certain methods, it called on Tesla. It was a problem which may hut such an extraordinary man would have hesitated to solve.

"It can be done," said Tesla, and he retired to his work-den in New York. All attempts to get him out or to say what he had accomplished were futile. Finally, he emerged and he said to the projectors of the power scheme: "This will do it." He showed them the plans for and explained what must be the practical working of the transformers and assured them that they would bring Niagara's power to the queen of the lake edition.

His invention was worked out by practical men who had unlimited faith in the tall, nervous and untiring genius on whom they relied for a solution of a problem which had threatened to retard for years the realization of their hopes.

This morning Tesla's promise was fulfilled. The power was delivered in Buffalo.