Re: What chance do we have?

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Ed Phillips by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>" <evp-at-pacbell-dot-net>

The experiments
> performed by Michael Faraday in England were also taking place at the same
> time in the US by Joseph Henry. Both men were experimenting with the electric
> current produced
> by the relative motion between a coil of wire and a magnet. 

	Not important, but Faraday was earlier than Henry.  Henry built much
larger magnets, of course.  Making the batteries to power them was a
prodigious feat for that time.

That, and a
> galvanometer or a compass is all it takes to demonstrate an alternating
> current. Within another fifty years
> it was the genius of Charles Steinmetz and Nicholas Tesla who developed the
> AC technology we have today. 

	A couple of points worth mentioning.  First of all, there were AC power
generators and transformers before Tesla.  Motors too, I seem to
remember.  I have a book published by the IEEE and called something like
"History of Electrical Engineering Education" or something like that
which cites names and references.  Can't cite it correctly because I
have filed it away some place where I can't find it at the moment.  What
Tesla contributed was a complete and very practical SYSTEM, from
generators to motors, along with convincing demonstrations and
beautifully written prose descriptions of his inventions and how they
worked.  Hard to believe that someone for whom English was at best a
third language could write so very well.  I see few things as clear and
accurate today.

	General Electric's Steinmetz, who fully credited Tesla's pioneer
efforts, was as brilliant a genius who applied himself to making the AC
power industry practical.  In this area he deserves at least equal
credit with Tesla for his pioneering accomplishments in engineering AND
engineering education.  The latter is often overlooked.  Tesla worked
more or less in isolation and self-imposed secrecy whereas Steinmetz
published widely and thereby helped expand the EE community.

I may be wrong on this but I don't think George
> Westinghouse had very much if anything to do with electricity. The
> Westinghouse Corporation was built on the air brake. 

	Westinghouse was an entrepeneur and financed Tesla's work, but didn't
contribute to it himself.  I suspect that he has been made out to be
much more of a villain than he really was, but very hard to tell with
the veil of time which separates us.

The company evolved into
> electrical technology
> and broadcasting.
> 
> Cheers,
> Ralph Zekelman

Ed