4

INVENTIONS OF NIKOLA TESLA.

be said to liave begun work on the ideas that fructified ultimatelyin his rotating field motors.

In the second year of his Grate course, Mr. Tesla gave up thenotion of becoming a teacher, and took up the engineering cur-riculum. His studies ended, he returned home in time to see hisfather die, and then went to Prague and Buda-Pesth to studylanguages, with the object of qualifying himself broadly for thepractice of the engineering profession. For a short time heserved as an assistant in the Government Telegraph Engineer-ing Department, and then became associated with M. Puskas, apersonal and family friend, and other exploiters of the telephonein Hungary. He made a number of telephonic inventions, butfound his opportunities of benefiting by them limited in variousways. To gain a wider field of action, he pushed on to Parisand there secured employment as an electrical engineer with oneof the large companies in the new industry of electric lighting.

It was during this period, and as early as 1882, that he beganserious and continued efforts to embody the rotating field prin-ciple in operative apparatus. He was enthusiastic about it; be-lieved it to mark a new departure in the electrical arts, and couldthink of nothing else. In fact, but for the solicitations of a fewfriends in commercial circles who urged him to form a companyto exploit the invention, Mr. Tesla, then a youth of little worldlyexperience, would have sought an immediate opportunity to pub-lish his ideas, believing them to be worthy of note as a novel andradical advance in electrical theory as well as destined to havea profound influence on all dynamo electric machinery.

At last he determined that it would be best to try his fortunesin America. In France he had met many Americans, and incontact with them learned the desirability of turning every newidea in electricity to practical use. He learned also of the readyencouragement given in the Hnited States to any inventor whocould attain some new and valuable result. The resolution wasformed with characteristic quickness, and abandoning all hisprospects in Europe, he at once set his face westward.

Arrived in the United States, Mr. Tesla took off his coat theday he arrived, in the Edison Works. That place had been agoal of his ambition, and one can readily imagine the benefit andstimulus derived from association with Mr. Edison, for whomMr. Tesla has always had the strongest admiration. It was im-possible, however, that, with his own ideas to carry out, and his