Nikola Tesla Books
IN SEARCH OF NIKOLA TESLA Modern transmission lines carry electrical power at high voltage for the simple reason that the higher the voltage the lower the losses due to line resistance. In the Edison system resistive losses were so high that power could only be transmitted over fairly short distances. Each city was required to have its own power station and there was little hope of electricity being taken to outlying districts or small villages. Thomas Edison's major rival was George Westinghouse, who had realized, as Tesla had done, that AC power could be stepped up to higher voltages by transformer and then transmitted at very low loss. In 1886 Westinghouse constructed a test transmission line in which current at three thousand volts was carried a distance of four thousand feet. Edison for his part refused to move; his giant corporation was committed to DC power and he forged ahead, building improved generators and transmission lines. He felt confident in his position, for he knew that his own system had been tried and trusted by his satisfied clients, while the Westinghouse generators were far from successful. The great American inventor was by no means the lone reactionary when it came to high-voltage AC power, for the International Niagara Commission headed by the leading physicist of the day, Lord Kelvin, had decided in favour of direct current. The same year that Mark Twain published Huckleberry Finn and Hiram Maxim invented his automatic gun, Nikola Tesla landed in New York and approached Thomas Alva Edison with the plans for his great electrical invention. Edison was not sympathetic, although he did offer the new immigrant a position in his company. The following year Tesla was on his own again and, financed by interested businessmen, he patented a new system of street lighting in the name of 'The Tesla Electric Light and Manufacturing Company, of Rahway, New Jersey'. To have incorporated oneself and filed such a series of patents is no mean achievement, yet it appears that by the end of the same year Tesla's funds had run out and he was forced to work as a labourer. By 1887 he had again found backers and this time used their money to construct a laboratory and workshop. For the next few weeks his energies were directed towards the vision he had been given back in Budapest in 1882. Tesla's 83
