The Teslian - Vol. I, No. 8 Page 6

TRANSMISSION OF POWER

The Multiphase or Polyphase System

Tesla Patents

There are to-day thousands of waterfalls with millions of horse power of energy going to waste for lack of economical means of transporting such power to places of use.

Each horse power of work for ten hours for each working day requires, through a steam engine, about six tons of coal per annum, so that the development and utilization of these inexhaustible sources of power will be equivalent to the saving of millions of tons of coal each year, and will thus assist in solving the problem of conserving our enormous, but exhaustible, fuel supply.

The means for transporting this power and delivering it in suit- able form for commercial uses is found in recent applications of electricity. Through the developments already made, electric energy is now available for lighting, for the distribution of power and for heating. The wide extent of its successful application to lighting, and the distribution of power are familiar to every one, and its utilization in heating bids fair to make this method a formidable rival of coal in the vicinity of water powers.

The introduction of successful methods of utilizing these natural sources of power will not only meet the present demands of cities within a suitable radius, but it may be safely predicted that there will be a rapid building up of industries in such localities, and a consequent shifting of centers of population, with also a development of industries which have heretofore lain dormant on account of the cost of power.

When the Westinghouse Electric Company was formed, foreseeing that by alternating currents only could electrical energy be transmitted over long distances, we made the alternating system a specialty, and to that end secured the Gaulard and Gibbs inventions, which had theretofore been considered unworthy of more than experimental attention, Prior to our operations the alternating system had been emphatically condemned as uncommercial by the most eminent engineers of the world, almost without exception; but, in the face of unusual opposition, we succeeded in rapidly introducing a comprehensive system for lighting, which not only proved a successful competitor of other systems, but by its flexibility and adaptation to great distances, has opened up and developed extensive fields which could not otherwise have been occupied. The success of alternating current for lighting led us to seek a solution of the problem of distributing power by the same currents.