not think Tesla
could have known of his (Ferraris') experiments at that time, and adds
that he thinks Tesla was an independent and original inventor of this
principle. With such an acknowledgment from Ferraris there can be
little doubt about Tesla's originality in this matter.

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, th