h at that
time formed part of the great Austro-Hungarian Empire. Today it is a
northern province of Yugoslavia, a state created after the 1914-1918
war. Tesla studied at the Graz Technical University and later in
Budapest. Early in his studies he had the idea that a way had to be
found to run electric motors directly from A.C. generators. His
professor in Graz had assured him categorically that this was not
possible. But young Tesla was not convinced. When he went to
Budapest he got a job in the Central Telegraph Office, and one evening
in 1882, as he was sitting on a bench in the City Park he had an
inspiration which ultimately led to the solution of the problem.

Tesla remembered a poem by the German poet Goethe about the sun
which supports life on the earth and when the day is over moves on to
give life to the other side of the globe. He picked up a twig and
began to scratch a drawing on the soil in front of him. He drew four
coils arranged symmetrically round the circumference of a circle. In
the centre he drew a rotor or armature. As each coil in turn was
energised it attracted the rotor towards it and the rotary motion was
established. When he constructed the first practical models he used
eight, sixteen and even more coils. The simple drawing on the ground
led to the design of the first induction motor driven directly by
A.C.electricity.

Tesla emigrated to the U.S.A. in 1884. During the first year he
filed no less than 30 patents mostly in relation to the generation and
distribution of A.C. mains electricity. He designed and built his
'A.C. Polyphase System' which generated three-phase alternating current
at 25 Hz. One particular unit delivered 422 amperes at 12,000 volts.
The beauty of this system was that the voltage could be stepped down
using transformers for local use, or stepped up to many thousands of
volts for transmission over long distances through relatively thin
conductors. Edison's generating stations were incapable of any such
thing.

Tesla signed a lucrative contract with the famous railway engineer
George Westinghouse, the inventor of the Westinghouse Air Brake which
is used by most railways all over the world to the present day. Their
generating station was put into service in 1895 and was called the
Niagara Falls Electricity Generating Company. It supplied power for
the Westinghouse network of trains and also for an industrial complex
in Buffalo, New York.