Nikola Tesla Books
The 53 hydroelectric power plants and 14 thermal power plants that are being built in our country as an essential component of our Five-Year Plan are the most magnificent monument that our peoples are raising to their great son. Not only the power stations themselves, but also the numerous pylons throughout our land through which electrical energy is transmitted, and every motor that drives the machines in our factories, are living monuments to the great genius.
After the discovery of the polyphase motor, a campaign began in America, England, and Germany to deny Tesla the right of priority. In 1888, the name of the Italian professor Ferraris began to be mentioned. Large capitalist electrical enterprises that produced direct-current motors found themselves threatened by Tesla's invention and, in order to avoid paying compensation for Tesla's patent, sought to circumvent it. Alongside Ferraris, the names of Dolivo-Dobrovolsky and Hazlewander were also promoted; they were working in Germany.
The struggle against Tesla ceased only in 1900, when the Patent Office in Washington issued a definitive decision which, among other things, stated:
...Before Tesla's inventions, the alternating-current motor was not in useâ¦From the time of the Tesla patents cited here, we have witnessed an entire revolution in technology, brought about by the means described in these patentsâ¦It was destined to Tesla's genius to subdue the untamable, unrestrained, and until then opposing elements of the technical forces of nature and to harness them for driving machinesâ¦What others regarded as insurmountable barriers, unbearable currents, and contradictory forces, he grasped and, by bringing their directions into harmony, utilized the power of Niagara Falls in practical motors in cities at great distancesâ¦
Despite all this, Tesla's name gradually fell into obscurity, and Tesla remained silent. On November 9, 1929,
