Mr. Tesla’s work in this field was wonderfully timely, and its worth was promptly appreciated in various quarters.  The Tesla patents were acquired by the Westinghouse Electric Company, who undertook to develop his motor and to apply it to work of different kinds.  Its use in mining, and its employment in printing, ventilation, etc., was described and illustrated in The Electrical World some years ago.  The immense stimulus that the announcement of Mr. Tesla’s work gave to the study of alternating current motors would, in itself, be enough to stamp him as a leader.

Mr. Tesla is only 35 years of age.  He is tall and spare with a clean-cut, thin, refined face, and eyes that recall all the stories one has read of keenness of vision and phenomenal ability to see through things.  He is an omnivorous reader, who never forgets; and he possesses the peculiar facility in languages that enables the least educated native of eastern Europe to talk and write in at least half a dozen tongues.  A more congenial companion cannot be desired for the hours when one “pours out heart affluence in discursive talk,” and when the conversation, dealing at first with things near at hand and next to us, reaches out and rises to the greater questions of life, duty and destiny.

In the year 1890 he severed his connection with the Westinghouse Company, since which time he has devoted himself entirely to the study of alternating currents of high frequencies and very high potentials, with which study he is at present engaged.  No comment is necessary on his interesting achievements in this field; the famous London lecture published in this volume is a proof in itself.  His first lecture on his researches in this new branch of electricity, which he may be said to have created, was delivered before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers on May 20, 1891, and remains one of the most interesting papers read before that society.  It will be found reprinted in full in The Electrical World, July 11, 1891.  Its publication excited such interest abroad that he received numerous requests from English and French electrical engineers and scientists to repeat it in those countries, the result of which has been the interesting lecture published in this volume.

The present lecture presupposes a knowledge of the former, but it may be read and understood by any one even though he has not read the earlier one.  It forms a sort of continuation of the latter, and includes chiefly the results of his researches since that time.

EXPERIMENTS WITH ALTERNATE CURRENTS OF HIGH POTENTIAL AND HIGH FREQUENCY

I cannot find words to express how deeply I feel the honor of addressing some of the foremost thinkers of the present time, and so many able scientific men, engineers and electricians, of the country greatest in scientific achievements.