Tesla: The Life and Times of an Electric Messiah by Nigel Cawthorne Read Free Book Online

bought from local children at 25 cents each, while Edison himself ‘Westinghoused’ two calves and a horse. After this demonstration, The New York Times reported: ‘The experiments proved the alternating current to be the most deadly force known to science, and that less than half the pressure used in this city for electric lighting by this system is sufficient to cause instant death. After Jan. 1 the alternating current will undoubtedly drive the hangman out of business in this State.’
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    Electrical Challenge
    George Westinghouse wrote to The New York Times in protest. Brown responded by using the letters page to draw attention to Westinghouse’s ‘pecuniary interests’ in ‘death-dealing alternating current’ and issued a challenge:
    I therefore challenge Mr Westinghouse to meet me in the presence of competent electrical experts and take through his body the alternating current while I take through mine a continuous current. The alternating current must have not less than 300 alternations per second (as recommended by the Medico-Legal Society). We will commence with 100 volts, and will gradually increase the pressure by 50 volts at a time, with each increase, until either one or the other has cried enough, and publicly admits his error.
    Westinghouse did not reply, though Brown was later denounced by the New York Sun . Under the headline ‘For Shame, Brown’, the newspaper revealed that he had been ‘paid by one electric company to injure another’. Brown protested: ‘I am exposing the Westinghouse system as any right-minded man would expose a bunco starter or the grocer who sells poison where he pretends he sells sugar.’ But his protests did no good.
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    Facing The Electric Chair
    William Kemmler’s execution went ahead on 6 August 1890. It was neither instantaneous nor painless. ‘To the horror of all present, the chest began to heave, foam issued from the mouth, and the man gave every evidence of reviving,’ said Electrical Review .
    A doctor present told The New York Times he would rather have seen ten hangings. Westinghouse said they would have done better with an axe, while Edison blamed the doctors. They had applied the current to the top of the head, though hair was not conductive, and they had not put his hand in a jar of water. However, next time they would get it right, he said. Brown was notable by his absence.
    But the damage had been done. Backers began to pull their money out of Westinghouse and work on Tesla’s induction motor was abandoned. But Tesla still had faith in his invention and agreed to remove the royalty clause from the contract if work resumed.
    â€˜George Westinghouse was, in my opinion, the only man on the globe who could take my alternating current system under the circumstances then existing and win the battle against prejudice and money power,’ Tesla said. ‘He was a pioneer of imposing stature and one of the world’s noblemen.’
    After 2 years, work on Tesla’s motors resumed. The young engineer Benjamin Lamme examined the patents and the prototypes, and concluded that Tesla had exhausted all the possibilities of adapting them to run at higher frequencies. He managed to talk his superiors round. Westinghouse had to go over to 60 cycles per second – the frequency of alternating current used to this day in the US – and the company simply announced that a young engineer named Lamme had discovered the efficiencies of lower frequencies.
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    Tesla Travels the World
    In 1889, Tesla left Pittsburgh and went to Paris for the Universal Exposition of 1889 where the Eiffel Tower made its first appearance. Edison was there too. He had been given a one-acre site to display his inventions and the latest – the phonograph – was causing a sensation. With his new wife, 24-year-old Mina, Edison had lunch with Alexander Eiffel in his apartment at the top of the tower. He also