Nikola Tesla's Work at Niagara

In 1877 Sir William Siemens, who had lately been to America; in an address be fore the Iron and Steel Institute, says Clemens Herschel in Cassier's Magazine for July, thus outlined briefly his views as to the possible utilization of the world's great water powers:

The advantage of utilizing water power applies, however, chiefly to continental countries, with large elevated plateaus, such as Sweden and the United States of America, and it is interesting to contemplate the magnitude of power which is now for the most part lost, but which may be, sooner or later, called into requisition. Take the Falls of Niagara as a familiar example. The Amount of water passing over this fall has been estimated at 100,000,000 tons per hour, and its perpendicular descent may be taken at 150 feet, without counting the rapids, which represent a further fall of 150 feet, making a total of 300 feet between lake and lake. But the force represented by the principal fall alone amounts to 6,800,000 horse power, an amount which, if it had to be produced by steam, would necessitate an expenditure of not less than millions of tons of coal per annum.

It would not be very difficult, indeed, to realize a large portion of the power so wasted by means of turbines and water wheels erected on the shores of the deep river below the falls, supplying them from races but along the edges. But it would be impossible to utilize the power on the spot, the district being devoid of mineral wealth or other natural inducements for the establishment of factories. In order to render available the force of falling water at this and hundreds of other places similarly situated, we must devise a practicable means of transporting the power.

As regards electrical transmission, suppose water power be employed to give motion to a dynamo-electrical machine, a very powerful electrical current will be the result, which may be carried to a great distance, through a large metallic conductor, and then be made to impart motion to electro-magnetic engines, to ignite the carbon points of electric lamps, or to effect the separation of metals from their combinations. A copper rod, 3 inches in diameter, would be capable of transmitting 1,000 horse power a distance of, say, thirty miles, an amount sufficient to supply 250,000 candle power, which would suffice to Illuminate a moderately sized town.

The audience smiled incredulously, and it is unlikely that a single man present, except the orator himself, gave any serious thought to the question. It was looked upon as a dream, as a permissible vagary of an accomplished scientist. But the visitor to Niagara to-day would speedily be impressed with the fact that the dream of the great German of 1877 Is the accomplished reality of this year 1895.

Attracting little attention except in the scientific papers, there has been going on there for several years a work which stands completed to-day in its details, and which is the unrivaled engineering triumph of the nineteenth century.

Perhaps the most romantic part of the story of this great enterprise would be the history of the career of the man above all men who made it possible — not an American, not a Britisher, neither a Frenchman nor a German, but a Montenegrin, a man of humble birth, who has risen almost before he reached the fullness of manhood to a place in the first rank of the world's great scientists and discoverers — Nikola Tesla

Extremely modest and retiring in disposition, he has kept himself so far in the background during his few years of brilliant and fruitful research, that it has only been within a few months that the world has come to know him at all. Even now the world is more apt to think of him as a producer of weird experimental effects than as a practical and useful inventor. Not so the scientific public, or the business men. By the latter classes Tesla is properly appreciated, honored, perhaps even envied. For he has given to the world a complete solution of the problem which has taxed the brains and occupied the time of the greatest electro-scientists of the last two decades — namely, the successful adaptation of electrical power transmitted over long distances to the varied uses demanded in commercial work.

The earliest electric lighting was by the arc system, the peculiarities of the current rendering the system totally unfit for anything else. Next came the low-tension incandescent system, which was gradually and successfully adopted for both are lighting and motor service. But the limitations of this system were within such narrow lines that it was proved at once to be far short of perfection in a commercial sense. The distance from the station to which this low tension direct current can be profitably transmitted is not over mile and a half. Clearly, something else was needed.

In 1887 the single-phase alternating system was first introduced in this country by the Westinghouse Company. It was a step in advance, yet not the ideal, in that only lighting could be done by the system, there being no fit motor invented for this current.

A short time after this in 1888 — patents were first issued to Nikola Tesla on a complete polyphase alternating system. He labored diligently, taking out in all twenty-nine uncontested patents, all acquired by the Westinghouse Company, covering every part of the system, and it was not long before the scientific world knew that the long-hidden result was achieved — an electrical system, perfectly well adapted for use in small villages, but still so flexible that both arc and incandescent lights and power for factories or mills can be profitably furnished twenty miles or more from the dynamo. Indeed, the limit of distance over which it may practically be transmitted is not yet fully determined, and such engineers as Mr. E. H. Kennelly and Prof. Houston assert with confidence that Albany, 300 miles away, can easily be lighted and supplied with power from the great plant at Niagara Falls.

To Tesla belongs the undisputed honor of being the man whose work made this Niagara enterprise possible, for without the possibility of long-distance transmission with practical motor service no way could have been found for utilizing profitably the almost boundless power of the great waterfall. Within a few years Tesla motors will be driving tools in every manufactory in the civilized world.