• JUNE 6, 1884: Tesla, twenty-eight years old, arrives in New York City with four cents in his pocket and his alternating current model, which he is eager to show Thomas Edison.
• 1884: Nikola Tesla begins working at Edison Electric, but he leaves less than a year later.
• 1885: Tesla Electric Light and Manufacturing is established in Rahway, New Jersey, with partners Robert Lane and B. A. Vail, who control the company and patents.
• MARCH 30, 1885: Tesla works with Edison’s former patent agent Lemuel Serrell and patent artist Raphael Netter on his first patent, an improvement to arc lights to eliminate flickering.
• NOVEMBER 1885: Westinghouse and Reginald Belfield disassemble and rebuild a Gaulard-Gibbs AC transformer, turning it into the modern-day transformer.
• JANUARY 8, 1886: George Westinghouse incorporates the Westinghouse Electric Company.
• AUGUST 14, 1886: Electrical Review journal features Tesla’s Rahway arc lighting project on its front page.
• 1886: Lane and Vail force Tesla out of Tesla Electric Light and Manufacturing.
• 1886: Gerry Commission (“Death Commission”) is created to investigate the “most humane and approved method” of execution.
• NOVEMBER 27, 1886: Adam, Meldrum & Anderson, a department store in Buffalo, NY, opens, using 498 Stanley lights run by Westinghouse’s AC system. This kicks off the beginning of the competition between Westinghouse’s AC and Edison’s DC.
• 1886: Tesla applies for a patent of the thermomagnetic motor while working various service jobs, including working for Western Union digging ditches for underground cables.
• 1887: Westinghouse Electric Company partners with Edison competitor Thomson-Houston Electric to install twenty-two Westinghouse transformers. In addition, Westinghouse Electric Company secures contracts for sixty-eight central stations.
• APRIL 1887: Tesla opens Tesla Electric Company with partners Alfred S. Brown and Charles F. Peck. Tesla now works on developing his alternating current system.
• OCTOBER 1887: Edison Electric Light releases its annual report detailing the dangers surrounding AC. The eighty-four-page report becomes A Warning from the Edison Electric Light Company, which is distributed to reporters and executives of various lighting utilities companies.
• LATE 1887: Copper prices nearly double in price from ten cents per pound to seventeen cents per pound, significantly heightening costs for Edison’s direct current system.
• NOVEMBER 1887: Dentist Alfred P. Southwick writes to Edison, asking him to vouch for the use of electricity as the most humane method of execution. Edison declines.
• DECEMBER 1887: Edison writes back to Southwick, now endorsing electricity using alternating current, thereby linking his main competitor, Westinghouse, to the death penalty.
• MARCH 12, 1888: The Great White Hurricane slams the East Coast, killing four hundred people and cutting off telephone and telegraph communication due to heavy rain, sleet, wind, and snow.
• APRIL 15, 1888: Fifteen-year-old Moses Streiffer is electrocuted by a loose telegraph wire in New York City. The US Illuminating Company is later charged with neglect.
• APRIL 28, 1888: Fred Witte dies after touching a United States Company arc lamp.
• MAY 11, 1888: Thomas H. Murray, a Brush Electric Company employee, is electrocuted by a severed electric wire while working.
• MAY 16, 1888: Tesla presents his AC motor at the American Institute of Electrical Engineering Convention and gains national praise.
• JUNE 5, 1888: Harold P. Brown has a letter published in the New York Evening Post, demanding alternating current over three hundred volts be outlawed, along with other proposed restrictions. The letter is read before the New York City Board of Electric Control.
• JUNE 7, 1888: Westinghouse writes to Edison, inviting him to come to Pittsburgh to form a truce. Edison declines five days later.
• JULY 1888: Tesla and Westinghouse agree to work together on alternating current.
• JULY 16, 1888: Westinghouse presents a letter to the New York City Board of Electric Control, explaining that 127 AC central stations had been created in two years’ time without incident, while several of Edison’s DC stations reported fires in that timeframe.
• JULY 30, 1888: Harold P. Brown meets with over seventy people from the press and representatives of various electric companies at Columbia College. Here, Brown electrocutes first animal (a dog) using AC.
• SEPTEMBER 1888: New York state legislature designates electrocution as its new mode of capital punishment.
• NOVEMBER 15, 1888: Dr. Frederick Peterson informs Medico-Legal Society of New York that both AC and DC can kill, but he prefers AC.
• DECEMBER 6, 1888: The New York Times declares alternating current the “most deadly force known to science.”
• JULY 1890: Edison testifies that the electric chair is more humane than hanging.
• AUGUST 6, 1890: William Kemmler is put to death at Auburn Prison for murdering his wife, becoming the first person to be executed.
• OCTOBER 1890: Baltimore, Maryland, purchases 6,000-light alternating current system, soon followed by an order for 1,500 lights in southern New York and in Nebraska.
• OCTOBER 4, 1890: Initial work begins to harness Niagara’s energy.
• LATE 1890: World financial markets take a dive, forcing Edison General Electric, Thomson-Houston, and Westinghouse Electric to consider possible mergers.
• JULY 30, 1891: Tesla becomes an American citizen.
• 1891: George Westinghouse convinces Tesla to terminate Tesla’s AC patent contract and waive his present and future royalties. Westinghouse agrees to continue sharing Tesla’s polyphase system with the world.
• 1892: Edison Electric board members urge Edison to consider switching to alternating current, but Edison objects.
• FEBRUARY 5, 1892: Alfred O. Tate, Edison’s personal secretary, informs Edison that Edison General Electric has merged with Thomson-Houston. The company is renamed General Electric, leaving Thomas Edison with no controlling interest.
• MAY 16, 1892: General Electric and Westinghouse Electric both bid to light and power the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Westinghouse Electric wins the bid.
• DECEMBER 1892: Westinghouse offers a fully detailed, two-phase AC system to the Cataract Construction Company. A few weeks later, General Electric makes a similar offer, but with a three-phase AC system.
• JANUARY 1893: After Westinghouse loses appeals to use Edison-style bulbs for the 1983 World’s Columbian Exposition, his patent on a Sawyer-Man “stopper” bulb is ruled unique and noninfringing, allowing him to move forward on lighting.
• JANUARY 9, 1893: Tests are performed on Westinghouse’s AC generators and transformers for the purpose of the Cataract Construction Company. All tests are met with praise.
• 1893: The World’s Columbian Exposition is held in Chicago, Illinois, completely powered by Tesla and Westinghouse’s alternating current. The Electricity Building demonstrates the AC system.
• MAY 1893: Westinghouse learns documents containing details of both the World’s Columbian Exposition and the Niagara plans have been stolen. It’s learned a Westinghouse draftsman sold the plans to General Electric for thousands of dollars. GE representatives claim they were only trying to see if Westinghouse had infringed on their plans.
• MAY 11, 1893: The Cataract Construction Company announces they have appointed their own electric consultant, Professor George Forbes, to design a generator to power their 5,000-horsepower water turbines.
• 1893: Tesla’s writings, edited by T. C. Martin, titled The Inventions, Researches and Writings of Nikola Tesla, are published.
• AUGUST 10, 1893: President of the Niagara Falls Power Company, Coleman Sellers, announces that Professor Forbes has designed a suitable dynamo and transformer. The Cataract Construction Company once again invites bids for the contract to manufacture and install its g
enerating machinery.
• AUGUST 25, 1893: Tesla passes 250,000 volts of alternating current through his body at the World’s Columbian Exposition as a demonstration to prove its safety.
• OCTOBER 27, 1893: Westinghouse finalizes an agreement to take charge of the Niagara Project, using Niagara Falls to generate an unheard-of amount of power. Nikola Tesla is a major part of this project.
• AUGUST 26, 1895: The first Niagara dynamo comes to life, sending electricity to the first commercial customer, the Pittsburgh Reduction Plant.
• JULY 19, 1896: Tesla tours Niagara Falls with Westinghouse and four others.
• JANUARY 12, 1897: Tesla is the guest of honor at a formal dinner to honor the successful effort of powering Buffalo, New York.
• AUGUST 31, 1897: Edison patents the kinetographic camera, a device for viewing moving pictures without sound.
• 1901: Tesla builds Wardenclyffe, a 187-foot tower, in Shoreham, New York.
• JANUARY 4, 1903: Topsy the elephant is strangled, poisoned, and electrocuted with alternating current.
• 1907: Stock market crashes and Westinghouse soon loses control of Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company and the Westinghouse Machine Company.
• 1912: George Westinghouse is awarded the Edison Medal for “meritorious achievements in the development of the alternating current system.”
• MARCH 12, 1914: George Westinghouse dies in New York City at the age of sixty-seven.
• 1916: Tesla awarded the Edison Medal for “meritorious achievements in electrical science and art.”
• 1917: The Wardenclyffe Tower is destroyed.
• OCTOBER 18, 1931: Edison dies at the age of eighty-four in West Orange, NJ. At the time of his death, there are 1,093 patents in Thomas Edison’s name.
• JANUARY 7, 1943: Tesla dies at age eighty-six, alone in his hotel room. The US government confiscates many of Tesla’s scientific documents and his private black notebook.
• 1943: Supreme Court rules Tesla is the true inventor of the radio. Guglielmo Marconi had initially received credit. Many people still debate who the actual inventor is.
• 1952: Sava Kosanovic, Tesla’s nephew, obtains his uncle’s papers, almost a decade after Tesla’s death.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Even a brilliant person like Nikola Tesla needed others to help him bring his ideas and inventions to reality. Such is the case with a writer. An author might have the knowledge and skill to tell a story, but to actually create a book, a wide assortment of people are needed. This said, I have a number of people to acknowledge who helped me craft this book.
I’d like to thank Brianne Johnson for urging me to write narrative nonfiction, which was not on my radar until she mentioned it. Bri considered my writing style, knowledge base, and platform, and then posed the idea to me. I’ve run with it ever since and haven’t looked back. Thank you, Bri.
Thanks as always to my best writing buddy Tracy Edward Wymer for always being there, as a critique partner and as a friend.
A big thank-you to Miss Jenny Burke at the Community Library of Dewitt and Jamesville for rounding up a ton of books for my research. Sure, it took me a few hand trucks and forklifts to transport all the books, but without them this book wouldn’t exist.
My editor, Christy Ottaviano, and her whole team deserve a great deal of thanks for seeing the potential in a couple of books about the Gilded Age. It took a detailed proposal and a sizable chunk of this book to get Christy to sign me on, and for that I am forever grateful. Christy, I hope you are proud of the work we have done, and the final product on these pages. Here’s to all our future projects together as well! A specific thank-you to Jessica Anderson for all she has done along the way, and to my amazing copy editor, Bethany Reis, for the massive effort she put into this book. Bethany, what you did was nothing short of magic. You are a very talented editor.
Finally, my family is my lifeline, made up of my wife, Shelby; my children, A.J. and Savannah; my mother, Gerrie; my stepfather, Garry; my brothers, Jeff and Tim; and my collection of nieces and nephews. All of you have been there for me as I put this book together, so thanks for all you’ve done to help me. Thanks, also, to my mother-in-law, Lydia, and all the Staffords for their love and support. Finally, my father told me long ago, during a difficult conversation, that maybe one day I’d write a book. He certainly was right about that.
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