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Authors: Marc Seifer
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producing lamps superior to those from America; 8 the company would erect central stations in most of the major cities of Europe for indoor lighting and also administer the large outdoor arc lamps which were being used to illuminate the urban streets. Tesla, who was working at Ivry-sur-Seine, would be trained with the other workers to travel out and help run these facilities. “I never can forget the deep impression that magic city produced on my mind. For several days after my arrival I roamed thru [sic] the streets in utter bewilderment of the new spectacle. The attractions were many and irresistible, but, alas, the income was spent as soon as received. When Mr. Puskas asked me how I was getting along…I [replied] ‘the last twenty-nine days of the month are the toughest!’” 9
In the mornings, before work, Tesla would arise at 5:00 A.M. to swim twenty-seven laps at a bathhouse on the Seine, and in the evenings he would play billiards with the workers and discuss his new AC invention.“One of them, Mr. D. Cunningham, foreman of the Mechanical Department, offered to form a stock company. The proposal seemed to me comical in the extreme. I did not have the faintest conception of what that meant except that it was the American way of doing things.” 10
T. C. Martin writes: “In fact, but for the solicitations of a few friends in commercial circles who urged him to form a company to exploit the invention, Mr. Tesla, then a youth of little worldly experience, would have sought an immediate opportunity to publish his ideas, believing them to be [a]…radical advance in electrical theory as well as destined to have a profound influence on all dynamo electric machinery.” 11
In his spare time, and as was his custom, Tesla wrote out the specifications and mathematics of his AC invention in a notebook 12 and worked on alternative designs for his flying machine. He probably sought out financial backers, for he received an invitation to go on a shooting expedition from a “prominent French manufacturer.” 13 Perhaps the inventor had not totally recovered from the strange illness he had almost succumbed to in Budapest, for after this outing he suffered the “sensation that my brain had caught fire. I saw a light as [though] a small sun was located in it and I [passed] the whole night applying cold compressions to my tortured head.” Writing this passage almost forty years later, Tesla claimed that “these luminous phenomena still manifest themselves from time to time, as when a new idea opening up possibilities strikes me.” 14
In the summer he worked on the lighting at the opera house in Paris or went to Bavaria to help in the wiring of a theater; and in the autumn he may have helped in the laying of underground cables for the new central station going up in Paris or traveled to Berlin to install incandescent lighting at the cafes. 15
At the end of the year Tesla “submitted to one of the administrators of the Company, Mr. Rau, a plan for improving their dynamos, and was given an opportunity.” Louis Rau, who was director of the Compagnie Continental Edison in rue Montchanien and had “his beautiful home lit with the Edison system,” 16 allowed Tesla to implement his modernization plan. Shortly thereafter the young inventor’s automatic regulators were completed and accepted gratefully. 17 Tesla was probably hoping to be compensated for his new contributions, but he was sent to work in Strasbourg before financial compensation was awarded.
In January 1883, Batchelor shipped twelve hundred lamps to the Strasbourg plant, located at the railroad station. 18 And within three months Tesla arrived to oversee the operations. There he would stay for the next twelve months.
Batchelor had been urging Edison to test the generators coming from America for at least “two or three days with a [full] load,” as fires from faulty armatures and poor insulation were becoming too common. Thepowerhouse at Strasbourg, in
In the mornings, before work, Tesla would arise at 5:00 A.M. to swim twenty-seven laps at a bathhouse on the Seine, and in the evenings he would play billiards with the workers and discuss his new AC invention.“One of them, Mr. D. Cunningham, foreman of the Mechanical Department, offered to form a stock company. The proposal seemed to me comical in the extreme. I did not have the faintest conception of what that meant except that it was the American way of doing things.” 10
T. C. Martin writes: “In fact, but for the solicitations of a few friends in commercial circles who urged him to form a company to exploit the invention, Mr. Tesla, then a youth of little worldly experience, would have sought an immediate opportunity to publish his ideas, believing them to be [a]…radical advance in electrical theory as well as destined to have a profound influence on all dynamo electric machinery.” 11
In his spare time, and as was his custom, Tesla wrote out the specifications and mathematics of his AC invention in a notebook 12 and worked on alternative designs for his flying machine. He probably sought out financial backers, for he received an invitation to go on a shooting expedition from a “prominent French manufacturer.” 13 Perhaps the inventor had not totally recovered from the strange illness he had almost succumbed to in Budapest, for after this outing he suffered the “sensation that my brain had caught fire. I saw a light as [though] a small sun was located in it and I [passed] the whole night applying cold compressions to my tortured head.” Writing this passage almost forty years later, Tesla claimed that “these luminous phenomena still manifest themselves from time to time, as when a new idea opening up possibilities strikes me.” 14
In the summer he worked on the lighting at the opera house in Paris or went to Bavaria to help in the wiring of a theater; and in the autumn he may have helped in the laying of underground cables for the new central station going up in Paris or traveled to Berlin to install incandescent lighting at the cafes. 15
At the end of the year Tesla “submitted to one of the administrators of the Company, Mr. Rau, a plan for improving their dynamos, and was given an opportunity.” Louis Rau, who was director of the Compagnie Continental Edison in rue Montchanien and had “his beautiful home lit with the Edison system,” 16 allowed Tesla to implement his modernization plan. Shortly thereafter the young inventor’s automatic regulators were completed and accepted gratefully. 17 Tesla was probably hoping to be compensated for his new contributions, but he was sent to work in Strasbourg before financial compensation was awarded.
In January 1883, Batchelor shipped twelve hundred lamps to the Strasbourg plant, located at the railroad station. 18 And within three months Tesla arrived to oversee the operations. There he would stay for the next twelve months.
Batchelor had been urging Edison to test the generators coming from America for at least “two or three days with a [full] load,” as fires from faulty armatures and poor insulation were becoming too common. Thepowerhouse at Strasbourg, in
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