et for improved arc lighting, and that would have to come first. Tesla wound up making several improvements and receiving their patents as well. One particular invention used the loss of magnetism in iron at seven hundred and fifty degrees or above to transform heat into mechanical and electric energy. Despite this Tesla found himself being eased out of the very company with his name in it. The Depression hit America and Tesla, out of work, undiscovered, was considering suicide, when once again it was proposed to him by some backers he start another company. This time, however, the companys purpose was to develop the alternating current. Within six months Tesla filed his first alternating current patent. Tesla was soon invited to a dinner where he met George Westinghouse. It just so happened that Teslas invention was the missing link Westinghouse had been searching for. Westinghouse bought Teslas AC patents for sixty thousand dollars and promised two dollars and fifty cents royalties on each horsepower sold. Tesla was hired at two thousand a month as a consultant for adapting his new system. Westinghouse had been working on a one hundred and thirty three cycle current which was wrong for Teslas motor. Eventually, Tesla was able to convince Westinghouses engineers to use sixty cycle current to which his motors hummed perfectly to. Sixty cycles has since been the standard for alternating current. When Edison found out about the dealings between Tesla and Westinghouse he was not pleased. Edison was bent on direct current and would do anything necessary to see that it succeeded. It was the beginning of the Electrician Crusades. Edison began to pay schoolboys twenty-five cents a head for cats and dogs he would then electrocute in his lab with alternating current. Afterwards, he would send leaflets around the neighborhoods to warn people to make the safe choice lest they be Westinghoused(Cheney 43). This was ...
