Tesla Patents Sustained

The suit of the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company against the New England Granite Company upon an infringement of the three Tesla polyphase power-transmission patents issued May 1, 1888, was recently decided in favor of the Westinghouse Company. The decision is a very sweeping one and is phrased in part in vigorous verbiage. Other parts of the decision appear unnecessarily oratorical; a notable paragraph of this character reads as follows: "It remained to the genius of Tesla to capture the unruly, unrestrained and hitherto opposing elements in the field of nature and art and to harness them to draw the machines of man. It was he who first showed how to transform the toy of Arago into an engine of power; the 'laboratory experiment' of Baily into a practically successful motor; the indicator into a driver; he first conceived the idea that the very impediments of reversal in direction, the contradictions of alternations might be transformed into power-producing rotations, a whirling field of force."