2-12-18

issues in these chapters:
Tesla's backers followed a patent strategy of selling or licensing his patents, not starting their own manufacturing company
patent-promote-sell strategy
key to this was promoting them
Tesla's lecture before the AIEE
Tesla lectured to the American Institute of Electrical Engineers in May 1888
Tesla was interested in ideal technologies, but he wasn't a scientist, he was interested in doing things (at least in theory) more than in how the universe works

Westinghouse was interested in Tesla's patents
a Westinghouse engineer--Shallenberger--had overlapping ideas
but discovered that Galileo Ferraris (a physics professor in Italy) had published the idea of a motor based on a rotating magnetic field, though he didn't think it would be practical
if the idea was known before Tesla patented it then Tesla's patents would be thrown out

Westinghouse did buy Tesla's patents and Tesla went to Pittsburgh to work out problems for manufacturing
Westinghouse wanted a motor that would work on his existing single phase system so Tesla worked on split phase designs
Tesla left after a year because of design decisions he didn't agree with
he wanted to do things his way
Westinghouse leaves the polyphase motor design on the shelf

after some travel he returned to New York to work in a new area: high frequency

1887 Hertz detected the electromagnetic waves predicted by James Clerk Maxwell
this led eventually to radio, but no one is imagining that yet

electromagnetic spectrumTesla started building high frequency AC systems
(much higher than the 60 cycles we use today)
he realized there were ways to get even faster oscillation of the electrical current
he was interested in transmitting electricity through the air
lighting light bulbs not connected to any wire
but he thought that the effect was more electric fields than electromagnetic waves
Tesla holding a lightbulb that
            lights up with no wire connection