I to the izzo, b to the insane.........just how insane could A1C...............be, in a code????

Middle years (1886–1899)

After leaving Edison's company Tesla partnered with two businessmen in 1886, Robert Lane and Benjamin Vail, who agreed to finance an electric lighting company in Tesla's name, Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing.^[45] The company installed electrical arc light based illumination systems designed by Tesla and also had designs for dynamo electric machine commutators, the first patents issued to Tesla in the US.^[46]

The investors showed little interest in Tesla's ideas for new types of motors and electrical transmission equipment and also seemed to think it was better to develop an electrical utility than invent new systems.^[47] They eventually forced Tesla out leaving him penniless. He even lost control of the patents he had generated since he had assigned them to the company in lieu of stock.^[47] He had to work at various electrical repair jobs and even as a ditch digger for $2 per day. Tesla considered the winter of 1886/1887 as a time of "terrible headaches and bitter tears." During this time, he questioned the value of his education.^[46][48]

AC and the induction motor

Drawing from U.S. Patent 381,968, illustrating principle of Tesla's alternating current induction motor

In late 1886 Tesla met Alfred S. Brown, a Western Union superintendent, and New York attorney Charles F. Peck. The two men were experienced in setting up companies and promoting inventions and patents for financial gain.^[49]Based on Tesla's patents and other ideas they agreed to back him financially and handle his patents. Together in April 1887 they formed the Tesla Electric Company with an agreement that profits from generated patents would go ⅓ to Tesla, ⅓ to Peck and Brown, and ⅓ to fund development.^[49] They set up a laboratory for Tesla at 89 Liberty Street in Manhattan where he worked on improving and developing new types of electric motors, generators and other devices.

One of the things Tesla developed at that laboratory in 1887 was an induction motor that ran on alternating current, a power system format that was starting to be built in Europe and the United States because of its advantages in long-distance, high-voltage transmission. The motor used polyphase current which generated a rotating magnetic field to turn the motor (a principle Tesla claimed to have conceived in 1882).^[50][51][52] This innovative electric motor, patented in May 1888, was a simple self-starting design that did not need a commutator, thus avoiding sparking and the high maintenance of constantly servicing and replacing mechanical brushes.^[53][54]

In 1888, the editor of Electrical World magazine, Thomas Commerford Martin (a friend and publicist), arranged for Tesla to demonstrate his alternating current system, including his induction motor, at the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (now IEEE).^[55] Engineers working for the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company reported to George Westinghouse that Tesla had a viable AC motor and related power system — something for which Westinghouse had been trying to secure patents. Westinghouse looked into getting a patent on a similar commutator-less, rotating magnetic field-based induction motor presented in a paper in March 1888 by the Italian physicist Galileo Ferraris, but decided Tesla's patent would probably control the market.^[56][57]

Nikola Tesla's AC dynamo-electric machine (AC Electric generator) in an 1888 U.S. Patent 390,721

In July 1888, Brown and Peck negotiated a licensing deal with George Westinghouse for Tesla's polyphase induction motor and transformer designs for $60,000 in cash and stock and a royalty of $2.50 per AC horsepower produced by each motor. Westinghouse also hired Tesla for one year for the large fee of $2,000 ($52,700 in today's dollars^[58]) per month to be a consultant at the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company's Pittsburgh labs.^[59]

During that year, Tesla worked in Pittsburgh, helping to create an alternating current system to power the city's streetcars. He found the time there frustrating because of conflicts between him and the other Westinghouse engineers over how best to implement AC power. Between them, they settled on a 60-cycle AC current system Tesla proposed (to match the working frequency of Tesla's motor), although they soon found that, since Tesla's induction motor could only run at a constant speed, it would not work for street cars. They ended up using a DC traction motor instead.^[60][61]

War of Currents

Tesla's demonstration of his induction motor and Westinghouse's subsequent licensing of the patent, both in 1888, put Tesla firmly on the "AC" side of the so-called "War of Currents,"^[62] an electrical distribution battle being waged between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse that had been simmering since Westinghouse's first AC system in 1886 and had reached the point of all-out warfare by 1888.^[63][64][65] This started out as a competition between rival lighting systems with Edison holding all the patents for DC and the incandescent light and Westinghouse using his own patented AC system to power arc lights as well as incandescent lamps of a slightly different design to get around the Edison patent.^[66] The acquisition of a feasible AC motor gave Westinghouse a key patent in building a completely integrated AC system, but the financial strain of buying up patents and hiring the engineers needed to build it meant development of Tesla's motor had to be put on hold for a while.^[67] The competition resulted in Edison Machine Works pursuing AC development in 1890 and by 1892 Thomas Edison was no longer in control of his own company, which was consolidated into the conglomerate General Electric and converting to an AC delivery system at that point.

"Tesla Polyphase System"

A Westinghouse display of the "Tesla Polyphase System" at Chicago's 1893 Columbian Exposition

At the beginning of 1893 Westinghouse engineer Benjamin Lamme had made great progress developing an efficient version of Tesla's induction motor and Westinghouse Electric started branding their complete polyphase phase AC system as the "Tesla Polyphase System", noting how they believed Tesla's patents gave them patent priority over other AC systems.^[68]

In 1893, George Westinghouse won the bid to light the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago with alternating current, beating out a General Electric bid by one million dollars.^[69] This World's Fair devoted a building to electrical exhibits. It was a key event in the history of AC power, as Westinghouse demonstrated the safety, reliability, and efficiency of a fully integrated alternating current system to the American public.^[70][71] At the Columbian Exposition, under a banner announcing the "Tesla Polyphase System", Tesla demonstrated a series of electrical effects previously performed throughout America and Europe,^[10]:76 included using high-voltage, high-frequency alternating current to light a wireless gas-discharge lamp.^[10]:79 An observer noted:

Within the room was suspended two hard-rubber plates covered with tin foil. These were about fifteen feet apart, and served as terminals of the wires leading from the transformers. When the current was turned on, the lamps or tubes, which had no wires connected to them, but lay on a table between the suspended plates, or which might be held in the hand in almost any part of the room, were made luminous. These were the same experiments and the same apparatus shown by Tesla in London about two years previous, "where they produced so much wonder and astonishment".^[72]

Tesla also explained the principles of the rotating magnetic field in an induction motor by demonstrating how to make a copper egg stand on end using a device he constructed known as the Egg of Columbus.^[73]