The Inventions, Researches and Writings of Nikola Tesla

...be said to have begun work on the ideas that ultimately blossomed into his rotating field motors.

In the second year of his course at Gratz, Mr. Tesla gave up the idea of becoming a teacher and took up the engineering curriculum. When his studies ended, he returned home in time to see his father pass away. He then went to Prague and Budapest to study languages, aiming to qualify himself broadly for the engineering profession. For a short time, he served as an assistant in the Government Telegraph Engineering Department and then became associated with M. Puskas, a family friend and promoter of the telephone in Hungary. He made several telephonic inventions but found his opportunities to benefit from them limited. Seeking a wider field of action, he moved to Paris and secured employment as an electrical engineer with one of the large companies in the new industry of electric lighting.

It was during this period, as early as 1882, that he began serious, sustained efforts to embody the rotating field principle in practical apparatus. He was enthusiastic about it, believed it marked a new departure in the electrical arts, and could think of nothing else. In fact, were it not for the urging of a few friends in commercial circles who encouraged 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 worthy of note as a radical, novel advance in electrical theory that was destined to have a profound influence on all dynamo-electric machinery.

At last, he decided it would be best to try his fortunes in America. In France, he had met many Americans and, in contact with them, learned the desirability of turning every new idea in electricity to practical use. He also learned of the ready encouragement given in the United States to any inventor who could produce a new and valuable result. The resolution was formed with characteristic quickness, and, abandoning all his prospects in Europe, he immediately set his face westward.

Upon arriving in the United States, Mr. Tesla began working the very day he arrived at the Edison Works. That place had been a goal of his ambition, and one can readily imagine the benefit and stimulus he derived from working with Mr. Edison, for whom Mr. Tesla has always held the strongest admiration. It was impossible, however, for Mr. Tesla to long remain in even the most delightful employ while carrying out his own ideas and developing his own inventions; and, his work now attracting attention, he left the Edison ranks...