Nikola Tesla and His Works - On the Occassion of the Eightieth Anniversary Page 28

it was claimed that high-voltage currents are life-threatening, that it was impossible to adapt Tesla’s machines to the interests of existing single-phase electrical power stations, and various other disturbances were cited. In the laboratory and workshops of the Westinghouse company, which purchased his patents, Tesla disproves all of that, partly with experiments, and achieves that the international Niagara - Company, against the wish of Lord Kelvin and Edison, in 1891, accepts Tesla’s system for a large hydroelectric plant at Niagara Falls, and solves a great struggle by his own work and partly with the help of Westinghouse engineers Scott, Schmidt, Shallenberger, Kerr and Billesby in favor of his system. Edison’s, Thomson - Huston’s and other companies in America and Europe apply the Tesla system after that.

But now another struggle is emerging, which Tesla was not very interested in. The Italian scientist Ferraris appears, who claims to have discovered the rotating magnetic field independently of Tesla and before him. The interests of the industry in Europe coincide with the interests of Ferraris and in professional magazines Ferraris merits are increasingly emphasized. Tesla’s name is omitted and one gets the impression that Ferraris is the real inventor of a new power that creates a revolution in technology and industry.

However, it is a historical truth, which can easily be established by documents, that Ferraris, after Tesla, created only a theory and a diagram, which only hints that a rotating magnetic field can be produced using a single-phase alternating current and one auxiliary phase. Ferraris does not yet know anything about multiphase currents. He doesn’t even think about energy transfer. Not only does he not feel the importance of the rotating field, but on the contrary, in his lecture before the Academy of Sciences in Turin on March 18, 1888, he claims that this discovery is only a theoretically interesting phenomenon without any practical value. In the lecture, he says: “These calculations and experimental results confirm the a priori clear conclusion that an apparatus built on this principle cannot have any commercial significance as a motor.” While Tesla applies for extensive patents on October 12, 1887, in which he presents not only his discoveries, but also the constructions and descriptions of the machines and engines made, and claims that his patents represent a complete solution to the issue of transmitting energy over the greatest distances on a technically perfect and economical basis, Ferraris five months later publishes an error and an incomplete theory and in his lecture explicitly denies any practical value. Various interests manage to achieve that Ferraris was subsequently proclaimed a great discoverer, scientist and inventor. The same case as with Mendeleev and Lothar Mayer. Geniuses, with their creative imagination and tremendous work and struggle, give humanity their epoch-making deeds, while low and selfish people do everything to diminish their fame.

2.) In the field of high frequency science and technology, we have a similar case. German scientist Heinrich Hertz published at the end of 1887