It was with this philosophy of life that Tesla in 1875, at the age of 19, went to Grätz, in Austria, to study electrical engineering at the Polytechnic Institute. He intended henceforth to devote all his energies to mastering that strange, almost occult force, electricity, and to harness it for human welfare.

His first effort to put this philosophy to a practical test almost resulted in disaster despite the fact that it worked successfully. Tesla completely eliminated recreation and plunged into his studies with such enthusiastic devotion that he allowed himself only four hours' rest, not all of which he spent in slumber. He would go to bed at eleven o'clock and read himself to sleep. He was up again in the small hours of the morning, tackling his studies.

Under such a schedule he was able to pass, at the end of the first term, his examinations in nine subjects--nearly twice as many as were required. His diligence greatly impressed the members of the faculty. The dean of the technical faculty wrote to Tesla's father, "Your son is a star of first rank." The strain, however, was affecting his health. He desired to make a spectacular showing to demonstrate to his father in a practical way his appreciation of the permission he gave to study engineering. When he returned to his home at the end of the school term with the highest marks that could be awarded in all the subjects passed, he expected to be joyfully received by his father and praised for his good work. Instead, his parent showed only the slightest enthusiasm for his accomplishment but a great deal of interest in his health, and criticized Nikola for endangering it after his earlier narrow escape from death. Unknown to Tesla until several years afterward, the professor at the Polytechnic Institute had written to his father early in the term, asking him to take his son out of the school, as he was in danger of killing himself through overwork.

On his return to the Institute for the second year he decided to limit his studies to physics, mechanics and mathematics. This was fortunate because it gave him more time in which to handle a situation that arose later in his studies, and was to lead to his first and perhaps greatest invention.

Early in his second year at the Institute there was received from Paris a piece of electrical equipment, a Gramme machine, that could be used as either a dynamo or motor. If turned by mechanical power it would generate electricity, and if supplied with electricity it would operate as a motor and produce mechanical power. It was a direct-current machine.

When Prof. Poeschl demonstrated the machine, Tesla was greatly impressed by its performance except in one respect--a great deal of sparking took place at the commutator. Tesla stated his objections to this defect.

"It is inherent in the nature of the machine," replied Prof. Poeschl. "It may be reduced to a great extent, but as long as we use commutators it will always be present to some degree. As long as electricity flows in one direction, and as long as a magnet has two poles each of which acts oppositely on the current, we will have to use a commutator to change, at the right moment, the direction of the current in the rotating armature."

"That is obvious," Tesla countered. "The machine is limited by the current used. I am suggesting that we get rid of the commutator entirely by using alternating current."

Long before the machine was received, Tesla had studied the theory of the dynamo and motor, and he was convinced that the whole system could be simplified in some way. The solution of the problem, however, evaded his grasp, nor was he at all sure the problem could be solved--until Prof. Poeschl gave his demonstration. The assurance then came to him like a commanding flash.

The first sources of current were batteries which produced a small steady flow. When man sought to produce electricity from mechanical power, he sought to make the same kind the batteries produced: a steady flow in one direction. The kind of current a dynamo would produce when coils of wire were whirled in a magnetic field was not this kind of current--it flowed first in one direction and then in the other. The commutator was invented as a clever device for circumventing this seeming handicap of artificial electricity and making the current come out in a one- directional flow.

The flash that came to Tesla was to let the current come out of the dynamo with its alternating directions of flow, thus eliminating the commutator, and feed this kind of current to the motors, thus eliminating the need in them for commutators. Many another scientist had played with that idea long before it occurred to Tesla, but in his case it came to him as such a vivid, illuminating flash of understanding that he knew his visualization contained the correct and practical answer. He saw both the motors and dynamos operating without commutators, and doing so very efficiently. He did not, however, see the extremely important and essential details of how this desirable result could be accomplished, but he felt an overpowering assurance that he could solve the problem. It was for this reason that he stated his objections to the Gramme machine with a great deal of confidence to his professor. What he did not expect was to draw a storm of criticism.

Prof. Poeschl, however, deviated from his set program of lectures and devoted the next one to Tesla's objections. With methodical thoroughness he picked Tesla's proposal apart and, disposing of one point after another, demonstrated its impractical nature so convincingly that he silenced even Tesla. He ended his lecture with the statement: "Mr. Tesla will accomplish great things, but he certainly never will do this. It would be equivalent to converting a steady pulling force like gravity into rotary effort. It is a perpetual motion scheme, an impossible idea."

Tesla, although silenced temporarily, was not convinced. The professor had paid him a nice compliment in devoting a whole lecture to his observation, but, as is so often the case, the compliment was loaded with what was expected by the professor to be a crushing defeat for the one whom he complimented. Tesla was nevertheless greatly impressed by his authority; and for a while he weakened in his belief that he had correctly understood his vision. It was as clear-cut and definite as the visualizations that came to him of the solutions of mathematical problems which he was always able to prove correct. But perhaps, after all, he was in this case a victim of a self-induced hallucination. All other things Prof. Poeschl taught were solidly founded on demonstrable fact, so perhaps his teacher was right in his objections to the alternating-current idea.

Deep down in his innermost being, however, Tesla held firmly to the conviction that his idea was a correct one. Criticism only temporarily submerged it, and soon it came bobbing back to the surface of his thinking. He gradually convinced himself that, contrary to his usual procedure, Prof. Poeschl had in this case demonstrated merely that he did not know how to accomplish a given result, a deficiency which he shared with everyone else in the world, and therefore could not speak with authority on this subject. And, in addition, Tesla reasoned, the closing remark with which Prof. Poeschl believed he had clinched his argument--"It would be equivalent to converting a steady pulling force like gravity into a rotary effort--was contradicted by Nature, for was not the steady pulling force of gravity making the moon revolve around the earth and the earth revolve around the sun?

"I could not demonstrate my belief at that time," said Tesla, "but it came to me through what I might call instinct, for lack of a better name. But instinct is something which transcends knowledge. We undoubtedly have in our brains some finer fibers which enable us to perceive truths which we could not attain through logical deductions, and which it would be futile to attempt to achieve through any wilful effort of thinking."

His enthusiasm and confidence in himself restored, Tesla tackled the problem with renewed vigor. His power of visualization--the ability to see as solid objects before him the things that he conceived in his mind, and which he had considered such a great annoyance in childhood--now proved to be of great aid to him in trying to unravel this problem. He made an elastic rebound from the intellectual trouncing administered by his Professor and was tackling the problem in methodical fashion.

In his mind he constructed one machine after another, and as he visioned them before him he could trace out with his finger the various circuits through armature and field coils, and follow the course of the rapidly changing currents. But in no case did he produce the desired rotation. Practically all the remainder of the term he spent on this problem. He had passed so many examinations during the first term that he had plenty of time to spend on this problem during the second.

It seemed, however, that he was doomed to fail in this project, for at the term's end he was no nearer the solution than he was when he started. His pride had been injured and he was fighting on the defensive side. He did not know that those seeming failures in his mental and laboratory experiments were to serve later as the raw material out of which yet another vision was to be created.

A radical change had taken place in Tesla's mode of life while at Grätz. The first year he had acted like an intellectual glutton, overloading his mind and nearly wrecking his health in the process. In the second year he allowed more time for digesting the mental food of which he was partaking, and permitted himself more recreation. About this time Tesla took to card-playing as a means of relaxation. His keen mental processes and highly developed powers of deduction enabled him to win more frequently than he lost. He never retained the money he won but returned it to the losers at the end of the game. When he lost, however, this procedure was not reciprocated by the other players. He also developed a passion for billiards and chess, in both of which he became remarkably proWcient.

The fondness for card-playing which Tesla developed at Grätz got him into an embarrassing situation. Toward the end of the term his father sent him money to pay for his trip to Prague and for the expenses incident to enrolling as a student at the university. Instead of going directly to Prague, Tesla returned to Gospic for a visit to the family. Sitting in at a card game with some youths of the city, Tesla found his usual luck had deserted him, and he lost the money set aside for his university expenses. He confessed to his mother what he had done. She did not criticize him. Perhaps the fates were using this method for protecting him from overwork that might ruin his health, she reasoned, since he needed rest and relaxation. Losses of money were much easier to handle than loss of health. Borrowing some money from a friend, she gave it to Tesla with the words, "Here you are. Satisfy yourself." Returning to the game, he experienced a change in luck and came out of it not only with the money his mother had given him but practically all of the university expense money he had previously lost. These winnings he did not return to the losers as was his previous custom. He returned home, gave his mother the money she had advanced him, and announced that he would never again indulge in card-playing.

Instead of going to the University of Prague in the fall of 1878 as he had planned, Tesla accepted a lucrative position that was offered him in a technical establishment at Maribor, near Grätz. He was paid sixty florins a month and a separate bonus for the completed work, a very generous compensation compared with the prevailing wages. During this year Tesla lived very modestly and saved his earnings.

The money he had saved at Maribor enabled him to pay his way through a year at the University of Prague, where he extended his studies in mathematics and physics. He continued experimenting with the one big challenging alternating-current idea that was occupying his mind. He had explored, unsuccessfully, a large number of methods and, though his failures gave support to Prof. Poeschl's contention that he would never succeed, he was unwilling to give up his theory. He still had faith that he would find the solution of his problem. He knew electrical science was young and growing, and felt deep within his consciousness that he would make the important discovery that would greatly expand the infant science to the powerful giant of the future.

It would have been a pleasure to Tesla to have continued his studies, but it now was necessary for him to make his own living. His father's death, following Tesla's graduation from the University at Prague, made it necessary for him to be self-supporting. Now he needed a job. Europe was extending an enthusiastic reception to Alexander Graham Bell's new American invention, the telephone, and Tesla heard that a central station was to be installed in Budapest. The head of the enterprise was a friend of the family. The situation seemed a promising one.

Without waiting to ascertain the situation in Budapest, Tesla, full of youthful hope and the self-assurance which is typical of the untried graduate, traveled to that city, expecting to walk into an engineering position in the new telephone project. He quickly discovered, on his arrival, that there was no position open; nor could one be created for him, as the project was still in the discussion stage.

It was, however, urgently necessary for financial reasons, that he secure immediately a job of some kind. The best he could obtain was a much more modest one than he had anticipated. The salary was so microscopically small he would never name the amount, but it was sufficient to enable him to avoid starvation. He was employed as draftsman by the Hungarian Government in its Central Telegraph Office, which included the newly developing telephone in its jurisdiction.

It was not long before Tesla's outstanding ability attracted the attention of the Inspector in Chief. Soon he was transferred to a more responsible position in which he was engaged in designing and in making calculations and estimates in connection with new telephone installations. When the new telephone exchange was finally started in Budapest in 1881, he was placed in charge of it.

Tesla was very happy in his new position. At the age of twenty-five he was in full charge of an engineering enterprise. His inventive faculty was fully occupied and he made many improvements in telephone central-station apparatus. Here he made his first invention, then called a telephone repeater, or amplifier, but which today would be more descriptively called a loud speaker--an ancestor of the sound producer now so common in the home radio set. This invention was never patented and was never publicly described, but, Tesla later declared, in its originality, design, performance and ingenuity it would make a creditable showing alongside his better-known creations that followed. His chief interest, however, was still the alternating-current motor problem whose solution continued to elude him.

Always an indefatigable worker, always using up his available energy with the greatest number of activities he could crowd into a day, always rebelling because the days had too few hours in them and the hours too few minutes, and the seconds that composed them were of too short duration, and always holding himself down to a five-hour period of rest with only two hours of that devoted to sleep, he continually used up his vital reserves and eventually had to balance accounts with Nature. He was forced finally to discontinue work.

The peculiar malady that now affected him was never diagnosed by the doctors who attended him. It was, however, an experience that nearly cost him his life. To doctors he appeared to be at death's door. The strange manifestations he exhibited attracted the attention of a renowned physician, who declared medical science could do nothing to aid him. One of the symptoms of the illness was an acute sensitivity of all of the sense organs. His senses had always been extremely keen, but this sensitivity was now so tremendously exaggerated that the effects were a form of torture. The ticking of a watch three rooms away sounded like the beat of hammers on an anvil. The vibration of ordinary city traffic, when transmitted through a chair or bench, pounded through his body. It was necessary to place the legs of his bed on rubber pads to eliminate the vibrations. Ordinary speech sounded like thunderous pandemonium. The slightest touch had the mental effect of a tremendous blow. A beam of sunlight shining on him produced the effect of an internal explosion. In the dark he could sense an object at a distance of a dozen feet by a peculiar creepy sensation in his forehead. His whole body was constantly wracked by twitches and tremors. His pulse, he said, would vary from a few feeble throbs per minute to more than one hundred and fifty.

Throughout this mysterious illness he was fighting with powerful desire to recover his normal condition. He had before him a task he must accomplish--he must attain the solution of the alternating-current motor problem. He felt intuitively during his months of torment that the solution was coming ever nearer, and that he must live in order to be there when it crystallized out of his unconscious mind. During this period he was unable to concentrate on this or any other subject.

Once the crisis was past and the symptoms diminished, improvement came rapidly and with it the old urge to tackle problems. He could not give up his big problem. It had become a part of him. Working on it was no longer a matter of choice. He knew that if he stopped he would die, and he knew equally well that if he failed he would perish. He was enmeshed in an invisible web of intangible structure that was tightening around him. The feeling that it was bringing the solution nearer to him--just beyond his finger tips--was cause for both regret and rejoicing. That problem when solved would leave a tremendous vacancy in his life, he feared.

Yet in spite of his feeling of optimism it was still a tremendous problem without a solution.

When the acute sensitivity reduced to normal, permitting him to resume work, he took a walk in the city park of Budapest with a former classmate, named Szigeti, one late afternoon in February, 1882. While a glorious sunset overspread the sky with a flamboyant splash of throbbing colors, Tesla engaged in one of his favorite hobbies--reciting poetry. As a youth he had memorized many volumes, and he was now pleased to note that the terrific punishment his brain had experienced had not diminished his memory. One of the works which he could recite from beginning to end was Goethe's Faust.

The prismatic panorama which the sinking sun was painting in the sky reminded him of some of Goethe's beautiful lines:

Tesla, tall, lean and gaunt, but with a fire in his eye that matched the flaming clouds of the heavens, waved his arms in the air and swayed his body as he voiced the undulating lines. He faced the color drama of the sky as if addressing the red-glowing orb as it flung its amorphous masses of hue, tint and chrome across the domed vault of heaven.

Suddenly the animated figure of Tesla snapped into a rigid pose as if he had fallen into a trance. Szigeti spoke to him but got no answer. Again his words were ignored. The friend was about to seize the towering motionless figure and shake him into consciousness when instead Tesla spoke.

"Watch me!" said Tesla, blurting out the words like a child bubbling over with emotion: "Watch me reverse it." He was still gazing into the sun as if that incandescent ball had thrown him into a hypnotic trance.

Szigeti recalled the image from Goethe that Tesla had been reciting: "The glow retreats . . . It yonder hastes, new fields of life exploring" a poetic description of the setting sun, and then his next words--"Watch me! Watch me reverse it." Did Tesla mean the sun? Did he mean that he could arrest the motion of the sun about to sink below the horizon, reverse its action and start it rising again toward the zenith?

"Let us sit and rest for a while," said Szigeti. He turned him toward a bench, but Tesla was not to be moved.

"Don't you see it?" expostulated the excited Tesla. "See how smoothly it is running? Now I throw this switch--and I reverse it. See! It goes just as smoothly in the opposite direction. Watch! I stop it. I start it. There is no sparking. There is nothing on it to spark."

"But I see nothing," said Szigeti. "The sun is not sparking. Are you ill?"

"You do not understand," beamed the still excited Tesla, turning as if to bestow a benediction on his companion. "It is my alternating-current motor I am talking about. I have solved the problem. Can't you see it right here in front of me, running almost silently? It is the rotating magnetic field that does it. See how the magnetic field rotates and drags the armature around with it? Isn't it beautiful? Isn't it sublime? Isn't it simple? I have solved the problem. Now I can die happy. But I must live, I must return to work and build the motor so I can give it to the world. No more will men be slaves to hard tasks. My motor will set them free, it will do the work of the world."

Szigeti now understood. Tesla had previously told him about his attempt to solve the problem of an alternating-current motor, and he grasped the full meaning of the scientist's words. Tesla had never told him, however, about his ability to visualize objects which he conceived in his mind, so it was necessary to explain the vision he saw, and that the solution had come to him suddenly while they were admiring the sunset.

Tesla was now a little more composed, but he was floating on air in a frenzy of almost religious ecstasy. He had been breathing deeply in his excitement, and the overventilation of his lungs had produced a state of exhilaration.

Picking up a twig, he used it as a scribe to draw a diagram on the dusty surface of the dirt walk. As he explained the technical principles of his discovery, his friend quickly grasped the beauty of his conception, and far into the night they remained together discussing its possibilities.

The conception of a rotating magnetic field was a majestically beautiful one. It introduced to the scientific world a new principle of sublime grandeur whose simplicity and utility opened a vast new empire of useful applications. In it Tesla had achieved the solution which his professor had declared was impossible of attainment.

Alternating-current motors had heretofore presented what seemed an insoluble problem because the magnetic field produced by alternating currents changed as rapidly as the current. Instead of producing a turning force they churned up useless vibration.

Up to this time everyone who tried to make an alternating-current motor used a single circuit, just as was in direct current. As a result the projected motor proved to be like a single-cylinder steam engine, stalled at dead center, at the top or bottom of the stroke.

What Tesla did was to use two circuits, each one carrying the same frequency of alternating-current, but in which the current waves were out of step with each other. This was equivalent to adding to an engine a second cylinder. The pistons in the two cylinders were connected to the shaft so that their cranks were at in angle to each other which caused them to reach the top or bottom of the stroke at different times. The two could never be on dead center at the same time. If one were on dead center, the other would be off and ready to start the engine turning with a power stroke.

This analogy oversimplifies the situation, of course, for Tesla's discovery was much more far-reaching and fundamental. What Tesla had discovered was a means of creating a rotating magnetic field, a magnetic whirlwind in space which possessed fantastically new and intriguing properties. It was an utterly new conception. In direct-current motors a fixed magnetic field was tricked by mechanical means into producing rotation in an armature by connecting successively through a commutator each of a series of coils arranged around the circumference of a cylindrical armature. Tesla produced a field of force which rotated in space at high speed and was able to lock tightly into its embrace an armature which required no electrical connections. The rotating field possessed the property of transferring wirelessly through space, by means of its lines of force, energy to the simple closed circuit coils on the isolated armature which enabled it to build up its own magnetic field that locked itself into the rotating magnetic whirlwind produced by the field coils. The need for a commutator was completely eliminated.

Now that this magnificent solution of his most difficult scientific problem was achieved, Tesla's troubles were not over; they were just beginning; but, during the next two months, he was in a state of ecstatic pleasure playing with his new toy. It was not necessary for him to construct models of copper and iron: in his mental workshop he constructed them in wide variety. A constant stream of new ideas was continuously rushing through his mind. They came so fast, he said, that he could neither utilize nor record them all. In this short period he evolved every type of motor which was later associated with his name.

He worked out the design of dynamos, motors, transformers and all other devices for a complete alternating-current system. He multiplied the effectiveness of the two-phase system by making it operate on three or more alternating currents simultaneously. This was his famous polyphase power system.

The mental constructs were built with meticulous care as concerned size, strength, design and material; and they were tested mentally, he maintained, by having them run for weeks--after which time he would examine them thoroughly for signs of wear. Here was a most unusual mind being utilized in a most unusual way. If he at any time built a "mental machine," his memory ever afterward retained all of the details, even to the finest dimensions.

The state of supreme happiness which Tesla was enjoying was

destined soon, however, to end. The telephone central station by which he was employed, and which was controlled by Puskas, that friend of the family, was sold. When Puskas returned to Paris, he recommended Tesla for a job in the Paris establishment with which he was associated, and Tesla gladly followed up his opportunity. Paris, he reasoned, would be a wonderful springboard from which to catapult his great invention on the world.

The budding superman Tesla came to Paris light in baggage but with his head filled to bursting with his wonderful discovery of the rotating magnetic field and scores of significant inventions based on it. If he had been a typical inventor, he would have gone among people wearing a look indicating that he knew something important, but maintaining absolute secrecy concerning the nature of his inventions. He would be fearful that someone would steal his secret. But Tesla's attitude was just the reverse of this. He had something to give to the world and he wanted the world to know about it, the whole fascinating story with all the revealing technical details. He had not then learned, and never did learn, the craft of being shrewd and cunning. His life plan was on a secular basis. He cared less for the advantages of the passing moment, more for the ultimate goal; and he wanted to give his newly discovered polyphase system of alternating-current to the human race that all men could benefit from it. He knew there was a fortune in his invention. How he could extract this fortune he did not know. He knew that there was a higher law of compensation under which he would derive adequate benefits from the gift to the world of his discovery. The method by which this would work out did not interest him nearly so much as the necessity for getting someone to listen to the details of his fascinating invention.

Six feet two inches tall, slender, quiet of demeanor, meticulously neat in dress, full of self-confidence, he carried himself with an air that shouted, "I defy you to show me an electrical problem I can't solve"--an attitude that was consistent with his twenty-five years, but also matched by his ability.

Through Puskas's letter of recommendation he obtained a position with the Continental Edison Company, a French company organized to make dynamos, motors and install lighting systems under the Edison patents.

He obtained quarters on the Boulevard St. Michel, but in the evenings visited and dined at the best cafes as long as his salary lasted. He made contact with many Americans engaged in electrical enterprises. Wherever he could get a patient ear, among those who had an understanding of electrical matters, he described his alternating-current system of dynamos and motors.

Did someone steal his invention? Not the slightest danger. He could not even give it away. No one was even slightly interested. The closest approach to a nibble was when Dr. Cunningham, an American, a foreman in the plant where Tesla was employed, suggested formation of a stock company.

With his great alternating-current-system invention pounding at his brain and demanding some way in which it could be developed, it was a hardship for him to be forced to work all day on direct-current machines. Nowadays, though, his health was robust. He would arise shortly after five o'clock in the morning, walk to the Seine, swim for half an hour, and then walk to Ivry, near the gates of Paris, where he was employed, a trip that required an hour of lively stepping. It was then half-past seven. The next hour he spent in eating a very substantial breakfast which never seemed sufficient to keep his appetite from developing into a disturbing factor long before noon.

The work to which he was assigned at the Continental Edison Company factory was of a variegated character, largely that of a junior engineer. In a short time he was given a traveling assignment as a "trouble shooter" which required him to visit electrical installations in various parts of France and Germany. Tesla did not relish "trouble shooting" but he did a conscientious job and studied intensely the difficulties he encountered at each powerhouse. He was soon able to present a definite plan for improving the dynamos manufactured by his company. He presented his suggestions and received permission to apply them to some machines. When tested they were a complete success. He was then asked to design automatic regulators, for which there was a great need. These too gave an excellent performance.

The company had been placed in an embarrassing position and was threatened with heavy loss through an accident at the railroad station in Strassburg in Alsace, then in Germany, where a powerhouse and electric lights had been installed. At the opening ceremony, at which Emperor William I was present, a short circuit in the wiring caused an explosion that blew out one of the walls. The German government refused to accept the installation. Tesla was sent, early in 1883, to put the plant in working order and straighten out the situation. The technical problem presented no difficulties but he found it necessary to use a great deal of tact and good judgment in handling the mass of red tape extruded by the German government as precaution against further mishaps.

Once he got the job well under way he gave some time to constructing an actual two-phase alternating-current motor embodying his rotary-magnetic-field discovery. He had constructed so many in his mind since that never-to-be-forgotten day in Budapest when he made his great invention. He had brought materials with him from Paris for this purpose and found a machine shop near the Strassburg station where he could do some of the work. He did not have as much time available as he had expected, and, while he was a clever amateur machinist, nevertheless the work took time. He was very fussy, making every piece of metal exact in dimensions to better than the thousandth of an inch and then carefully polishing it.

Eventually there was a miscellaneous collection of parts in that Strassburg machine shop. They had been constructed without the aid of working drawings. Tesla could project before his eyes a picture, complete in every detail, of every part of the machine. These pictures were more vivid than any blueprint and he remembered exact dimensions which he had calculated mentally for each item. He did not have to test parts through partial assembly. He knew they would fit.

From these parts Tesla quickly assembled a dynamo, to generate the two-phase alternating current which he needed to operate his alternating-current motor, and finally his new induction motor. There was no difference between the motor he built and the one which he visualized. So real was the visualized one that it had all the appearance of solidity. The one he built in the machine shop presented no elements of novelty to him. It was exactly as he had visualized it a year before. He had mentally experimented with its exact counterpart and with many variations of it during the months that had passed since the great vision came to him while rhapsodizing the sunset sky in Budapest.

The assembly completed, he started up his power generator. The time for the great final test of the validity of his theory had arrived. He would close a switch and if the motor turned his theory would be proven correct. If nothing happened, if the armature of his motor just stood still, but vibrated, his theory was not correct and he had been feeding his mind on hallucinations, based on fantasy not on fact.

He closed the switch. Instantly the armature turned, built up to full speed in a flash and then continued to operate in almost complete silence. He closed the reversing switch and the armature instantly stopped and as quickly started turning in the opposite direction. This was complete vindication of his theory.

In this experiment he had tested only his two-phase system; but he needed no laboratory demonstration to convince him that his three-phase systems for generating electricity and for using this current for transmission and power production would work even better, and that his single-phase system would work almost as well. With this working model he would now be able to convey to the minds of others the visions he had been treasuring for so long.

This test meant much more to Tesla than just the successful completion of an invention; it meant a triumph for his method of discovering new truths through the unique mental processes he used of visualizing constructs long before they were produced from materials. From these results he drew an unbounded sense of self-confidence; he could think and work his way to any goal he set.

There was good reason for Tesla's self-assurance. He had just passed his twenty-seventh birthday. It seemed to him only yesterday that Prof. Poeschl had seemingly so completely vanquished him for saying that he could operate a motor by alternating current. Now he had demonstrably accomplished what the learned professor said could never be done.

Tesla now had available a completely novel type of electrical system utilizing alternating current, which was much more flexible and vastly more efficient than the direct-current system. But now that he had it, what could he do with it? The executives of the Continental Edison Company by whom he was employed had continually refused to listen to his alternating-current theories. He felt it would be useless to try to interest them in even the working model. He had made many friends during his stay in Strassburg, among them the Mayor of the city, M. Bauzin, who shared his enthusiasm about the commercial possibilities of the new system and hoped it would result in the establishment of a new industry that would bring fame and prosperity to his city.

The Mayor brought together a number of wealthy Strassburgers. To them the new motor was shown in operation, and the new system and its possibilities described, by both Tesla and the Mayor. The demonstration was a success from the technical viewpoint but otherwise a total loss. Not one member of the group showed the slightest interest. Tesla was dejected. It was beyond his comprehension that the greatest invention in electrical science, with unlimited commercial possibilities, should be rejected so completely.

M. Bauzin assured him that he would undoubtedly receive a more satisfactory reception for his invention in Paris. Delays of officialdom in finally accepting the completed installation at the Strassburg station, however, postponed his return to Paris until the spring of 1884. Meanwhile, Tesla looked forward with pleasurable expectancy to a triumphant return to Paris. He had been promised a substantial compensation if he was successful in handling the Strassburg assignment; also, that he would be similarly compensated for the improvements in design of motors and dynamos, and for the automatic regulators for dynamos. It was possible that this would supply him with enough cash to build a full-size demonstration set for his polyphase alternating-current system, so that the tremendous advantages of his system over direct current could be shown in operation. Then he would have no trouble raising the needed capital.

When he got back to the company's offices in Paris and asked for a settlement of his Strassburg and automatic-regulator accounts, he was given what in modern terminology is called the "runaround." To use fictitious names, as Tesla told the story, the executive, Mr. Smith, who gave him the assignments, now told him he had no jurisdiction over financial arrangements; that was all in the hands of the executive, Mr. Brown. Mr. Brown explained that he administered financial matters but had no authority to initiate projects or to make payments other than those directed by the chief executive, Mr. Jones. Mr. Jones explained that such matters were in the hands of his department executives, and that he never interfered with their decisions, so Tesla must see the executive in charge of technical matters, Mr. Smith. Tesla traveled this vicious circle several times with the same result and finally gave up in disgust. He decided not to renew his offer of the alternating-current system nor to show his motor in operation, and resigned his position immediately.

Tesla was undoubtedly entitled to an amount in excess of $25,000 for the regulators he designed and for his services in Strassburg. Had the executives been endowed with even a smattering of horse sense, or the ordinary garden variety of honesty, they would have made an attempt to settle for $5,000, at the least. Tesla, hard pressed for cash, would undoubtedly have accepted such an amount, although with a feeling that he was being cheated in a large way.

Such an offer would probably have held Tesla on the payroll of the company and preserved for it the possession of the world's greatest inventor and one who at the time had definitely demonstrated he was an extremely valuable employee.

For a paltry few thousand dollars they lost not only a man who would have saved them many times that amount every year, but they also lost an opportunity to obtain world control of the greatest and most profitable electrical invention ever made.

One of the administrators of the company, Mr. Charles Batchellor, Manager of the Works, who was a former assistant and close personal friend of Thomas A. Edison, urged Tesla to go to the United States and work with Edison. There he would have a chance to work on improvements to the Edison dynamos and motors. Tesla decided to follow Mr. Batchellor's suggestion. He sold his books and all other personal possessions except a few articles which he expected to take with him. He assembled his very limited financial resources, purchased tickets for his railroad trip and transatlantic journey to New York. His baggage consisted of a small bundle of clothes carried under his arm and some other items stuffed into his pockets.

The final hours were busy ones and, as he was about to board the train, just as it was ready to pull out of the station, he discovered his package of baggage was missing. Reaching quickly for his wallet, which contained his railroad and steamship tickets and all his money, he was horrified to discover that that too was missing. There was some loose change in his pocket, how much he did not know--he did not have time to count it. His train was pulling out. What should he do? If he missed this train, he would also miss the boat--but he could not ride on either without tickets. He ran alongside the moving train, trying to make up his mind. His long legs enabled him to keep up with it without difficulty at first, but now it was gaining speed. He finally decided to jump aboard. The loose change he discovered was sufficient to take care of the railroad fare, with a negligible remainder. He explained his situation to the skeptical steamship officials and, when no one else showed up to claim his reservations on the ship up to the time of sailing, he was permitted to embark.

To one as fastidious as Tesla, a long steamship journey without adequate clothing was a trying experience. He had expected to encounter annoyances when getting along with the minimum amount of clothing which he planned carrying with him, but when even that limited layout was lost the annoyance became hardship. Coupled with this was the memory of disappointment and resentment over his recent experiences.

The ship offered little to interest him. He explored it thoroughly and in doing so made some contacts with members of the ship's company. There was unrest among the crew. There was unrest in Tesla also. He extended sympathy to members of the crew in their claimed unjust treatment. The grievances affecting the crew had built up one of those situations in which a small spark can cause a large explosion. The spark flew somewhere on the ship while Tesla was below decks in the crew's quarters. The captain and officers got tough and, with some loyal members of the crew, decided to settle the trouble with belaying pins as clubs. It quickly became a battle royal. Tesla found himself in the middle of a fight which when anyone saw a head he hit it.

Had Tesla not been young as well as tall and strong, his useful career might have ended at this point. He had long arms in proportion to his six feet two inches of height. The fist at the end of his arm could reach as far as a club in the hands of an adversary, and his height enabled him to tower over the other fighters so his head was not easy to reach. He struck hard and often, never knowing for or against which side he was fighting. He was on his feet when the fight was over, something which could not be said of a score of the crew members. The officers had subdued what they called a mutiny, but they too carried indications that they had been through a battle. Tesla was definitely not invited to sit at the captain's table during the voyage.

He spent the remainder of his journey nursing scores of bruises and sitting in meditation at the stern of the ship, which too slowly made its way to New York. Soon he would set foot on the "land of golden promise" and meet the famous Mr. Edison. He was destined to learn that it was really a "land of golden promise"--but also to discover something that would open his eyes about the fulfillment of promises.