SOURCE: "Nikola Tesla: He Dared to be Different," in America's Greatest Inventors, Thomas Y. Crowell Company. 1943, pp. 136-47.

In the following essay, Patterson presents Tesla as an independent and creative thinker who challenged the prevailing orthodoxy, namely that of Edison and others who adhered to the idea of direct, as opposed to alternating, current.

"—AND an electric motor, like a dynamo, must have its commutator and brushes," said the professor.

"I don't believe it," or words to that effect, came from one of the least promising pupils in the class, a country boy from far back in the mountains.

The scene was a classroom in the Polytechnic School at Gratz, in Austria, about 1875. The pupil who dared to disagree with his professor was Nikola Tesla.

The professor merely laughed, and assured the rest of the class that the principle he had just demonstrated with the laboratory's new Gramme...