ideas, but it is needless to say that his means did not admit of much
experimenting. By the time he had extracted several hundred thousand
square and cube roots for the public benefit, the limitations,
financial and otherwise, of the position had become painfully
apparent, and he concluded that the best thing to do was to make a
valuable invention. He proceeded at once to make inventions, but their
value was visible only to the eye of faith, and they brought no grist
to the mill. Just at this time the telephone made its appearance in
Hungary, and the success of that great invention determined his
career, hopeless as the profession had thus far seemed to him. He
associated himself at once with telephonic work, and made various
telephonic inventions, including an operative repeater; but it did not
take him long to discover that, being so remote from the scenes of
electrical activity, he was apt to spend time on aims and results
already reached by others, and to lose touch. Longing for new
opportunities and anxious for the development of which he felt himself
possible, if once he could place himself within the genial and direct
influences of the gulf streams of electrical thought, he broke away
from the ties and traditions of the past, and in 1881 made his way to
Paris. Arriving in that city, the ardent young Likan obtained
employment as an electrical engineer with one of the largest electric
lighting companies. The next year he went to Strasburg to install a
plant, and on returning to Paris sought to carry out a number of ideas
that had now ripened into inventions. About this time, however, the
remarkable progress of America in electrical industry attracted his
attention, and once again staking everything on a single throw, he
crossed the Atlantic.
Mr. Tesla buckled down to work as soon as he landed on these shores,
put his best thought and skill into it, and soon saw openings for his
talent. In a short while a proposition was made to him to start his
own company, and, accepting the terms, he at once worked up a
practical system of arc lighting, as well as a potential method of
dynamo regulation, which in one form is now known as the "third brush
regulation." He also devised a thermo-magnetic motor and other kindred
devices, about which little was published, owing to legal
complications. Early in 1887 the Tesla Electric Company of New York
was formed, and not long after that Mr. Tesla produced his admirable
and epoch-marking motors for multiphase alternating currents, in
which, going back to his ideas of long ago, he evolved machines having
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