But in order for it to be successful, the Niagara Project would require vast sums of money. In fact, some would joke—although it might not have been much of an exaggeration—the amount of capital needed for the project far exceeded the enormity of the Niagara Cataract itself.
Thomas Evershed did not possess the funds needed to see his plan through, so he formed a team to help round up investors. From the outset, the Evershed group had trouble finding moneymen who could actually come through with the funds needed. To help their cause, they enlisted the help of William Rankine, New York attorney and friend to many prominent businessmen.
Rankine immediately tempted investors, but the first few balked at actually putting up the capital needed. Enlisting the resilient and relentless Rankine paid off for the Evershed group, literally, when he landed none other than J. P. Morgan to contribute to the project. This was the same investor who had fronted many leading companies and businesses, including Thomas Edison and General Electric. He was the top dog of investors, and when he got involved that usually meant others followed his lead.
It was Morgan who helped point Rankine and the Evershed group toward the man who’d end up taking over the planning and implementation of the project, a New York investment banker named Edward Dean Adams.
When first approached by Rankine, Morgan initially indicated he had great confidence in the prospects of the project, only to decline after meeting with Rankine in person. Rankine was confused. Not wanting to lose this financial powerhouse who could make the Niagara Project a reality, he asked Morgan what he could do to turn that initial interest and confidence into a commitment. Morgan mentioned that he liked the plan and the details but claimed they didn’t have anyone in place to run it. When Rankine asked for his opinion on the matter, Morgan flatly said that if they could convince Edward Dean Adams to head the project, he’d be convinced enough to invest. At the tail end of 1889, Adams accepted the position, and Morgan put his money where his mouth was, and another 102 wealthy, respected investors also put up $2,630,000 to officially create the Cataract Construction Company.
To help him plan and construct the entire operation, Adams brought aboard Coleman Sellers, an experienced and respected mechanical engineer from Philadelphia. Additionally, Adams enlisted the services of Scottish mathematician Sir William Thomson to head the newly formed International Niagara Commission, charged with the task of determining the best and most efficient way to utilize the power of the falls.
While the use of a long underground tailrace was quickly decided upon unanimously, members of the commission debated internally over how, exactly, they should use the falls to fully realize its most effective power potential. Much like the electric fraternity itself, there was a split between which system would work best: direct or alternating current.
In the early fall of 1890, Thomson and the International Niagara Commission invited engineers from around the world to submit packaged solution plans for the best way to harness Niagara’s energy. They advertised that they’d award “prizes” for proposals, the highest amount being three thousand dollars.
Fourteen proposals later—with George Westinghouse adamantly refusing to supply “free” information without any true motivation—the commission continued to weigh the options while the physical construction got started.
Beginning with the tailrace, ground was broken on October 4, 1890, as 1,300 men made use of dynamite to dent the ground, pickaxes and sledgehammers to chip and break it up, and mules to trudge shards of rock and gravel to wagons that wheeled away unwanted debris from the tailrace site. Work continued around the clock day in and day out. Adams and Sellers adjusted their plans a few months into the project, shortening the tailrace from the originally determined two-and-a-half-mile length to just over one mile (6,800 feet).
In December 1891, Adams and Sellers had narrowed down their prospects and asked for detailed bids from six respected electric companies, including Thomson-Houston, Edison General Electric, and Westinghouse Electric. Based on the initial proposals, which Westinghouse had called “free information,” the commission now knew what they wanted: ten 5,000-horsepower turbines to place deep in two central stations, each of which would run an electric generator, resulting in a combined 100,000-horsepower payload. The scale of the project was well beyond anything in existence. Each of the six electric companies Adams and Sellers had solicited bids from began to put together an elaborate plan to be submitted sometime in the next year.
In the meantime, Adams and Rankine purchased two miles of land along the Niagara River, 1,500 acres to be used for dozens of factories, along with a plot of land to develop a small town for workers, called Echota, designed by renowned architect Stanford White.
Tailrace construction marched on for two years until December 20, 1892, when work finally came to an end. The result was the creation of the largest water tunnel in the world, complete with six hundred thousand tons of excavated rock and sixteen million bricks lining the tunnel to fortify its framework. Unfortunately, twenty-eight men had lost their lives in the process.
During the construction of the tailrace, another hydropower project had been taking place in the San Juan Mountains of Telluride, Colorado. The struggling Gold King Mine had decided it needed cheap energy, leading them to contact Westinghouse Electric about a single-phase alternator that could harness power from the 320-foot waterfall in the area. A Tesla single-phase alternator and seven hundred dollars’ worth of copper wire spread over three miles of rough terrain helped the Gold King Mine capture three thousand volts of electricity, without a glitch, for the entire year in 1892. George Westinghouse knew this Gold King Mine success would help his position, and he told Adams in the fall of 1892 that he would be submitting a bid. Westinghouse also knew that the success or failure of the World’s Fair would be watched closely by Adams and Sellers.
In December 1892, Westinghouse formally offered a fully detailed two-phase AC system to the Cataract Construction Company. Less than a month later, General Electric came through with its own offer, strikingly similar to the Westinghouse plan, with the only noticeable difference being the fact that GE’s proposal involved a three-phase alternating current system.
Thomas Edison’s absence as a major shareholder and creative force of General Electric worked against the company’s proposal, along with GE’s inexperience with a proven and functional large-scale AC system. GE was fighting against great odds.
When Adams and Sellers had the proposals in hand—four total—they began to review each plan and undertake experiments to test the validity of their claims. On January 9, 1893, Sellers and Johns Hopkins professor Henry Rowland ran tests on Westinghouse’s alternating current generators and transformers.
Rowland praised the workmanship of the Westinghouse machinery, the company’s vast knowledge of alternating current, and the fact that Westinghouse and Nikola Tesla owned all the critical AC patents.
Coleman Sellers, after visiting a General Electric plant to test their three-phase system, concluded, “I should incline to the biphase on account of its greater simplicity and its adaptability to a broader field of usefulness.”
After running tests on all the other proposals, Adams began to discreetly correspond with the electrical genius who knew alternating current like no other: Nikola Tesla. In his letters to Adams, Tesla made it clear that his ownership of almost every critical AC patent could not be overlooked or devalued. In no uncertain terms, Tesla explained that Westinghouse’s proposal could not be ignored, prompting Sellers to conclude in his twenty-five-page report, “I am not aware of any claim to ownership in this country of what can stop the owners of the Tesla patents from commanding the market.… no foreign company can secure the Cataract Construction Co. against all losses from patent litigation.”
In early May 1893, with the opening of the Fair dominating George Westinghouse’s attention, he learned that his company’s blueprints and documents about the prices, labor costs, and details of both the World’s Fair and the
Niagara plans had been stolen. Westinghouse immediately sought and was granted a warrant, which led to the discovery that a Westinghouse draftsman had sold the plans to General Electric for thousands of dollars. The draftsman was arrested and General Electric was soon found guilty, though GE representatives claimed they had only been trying to see if Westinghouse had infringed on their plans.
On May 8, the Pittsburgh district attorney announced conspiracy charges along with his intent to seek a grand jury indictment of General Electric, including the directly named Charles Coffin. A defensive Coffin adamantly denied any involvement in the crime, and in the end he was removed as a defendant, and the Pittsburgh jury found themselves deadlocked.
Then, on May 11—less than two weeks into the World’s Fair—Adams and the Cataract Construction Company shocked all four of the electric companies who had submitted plans. In a generic form letter, Adams informed all four companies that their services were no longer needed, as they had appointed their own electric consultant, Professor George Forbes, who was set to design a generator to power their 5,000-horsepower water turbines.
With the World’s Fair in full blossom, George Westinghouse did not have time to directly approach Adams and Sellers about this extreme and abrupt about-face. Instead, Westinghouse kept the Fair in focus for most of the summer of 1893, while Forbes spent the same time working on the Cataract dynamo design.
On August 10, 1893, Coleman Sellers, who had been named president of the Niagara Falls Power Company, announced that Professor Forbes had designed a dynamo and transformer that would be used for the plant. In a déjà vu move, Sellers and the Cataract Company once again invited interested electric companies to bid on the contract to manufacture and install its generating machinery.
On August 21, mentioning that he needed to see what Forbes had produced before composing a practical proposal, Westinghouse sent one of his top engineers, Lewis Stillwell, to Niagara to tour and inspect the Forbes designs. It took little time for Stillwell to conclude that Forbes’s designs were so helplessly flawed that he could not see any feasible way his company, or any company, could construct the machinery. It simply wasn’t realistically practical.
As Westinghouse and his team reviewed the Forbes blueprints that Stillwell had brought back to Pittsburgh, Westinghouse immediately relayed the news to the Cataract Company that “mechanically the proposed generators embodied good ideas,” opting to apply a thick coat of generous professionalism to his statement, but “electrically it was defective and if built as designed,” he flatly explained, they “would not operate.” Westinghouse added that the low frequency Forbes had planned would force lights to flicker and flash on and off, and the power was far too low to run a host of other electric devices it would need to run. He summed up his report with the reality that the hyper-elevated 22,000 voltage was far too high, and insulation issues would surface, resulting in an unsolvable problem.
Coleman Sellers and Edward Dean Adams received the Westinghouse report as if a blaring alarm had just sounded, one that was unable to be shut off. It was clear to Adams and Sellers that they needed the expertise and the full breadth of knowledge—not to mention the patents—that only Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing could offer. If the detailed report wasn’t evidence enough that they were making a mistake, the success of Westinghouse’s alternating current at the World’s Fair served as a clincher.
So it was that three days before the World’s Fair closed, on October 27, 1893, George Westinghouse finalized an agreement—complete with a signed contract—to take charge of the Niagara Project. The War of the Currents had been won. The final blow had been struck, and alternating current and George Westinghouse were the last combatant left standing.
This also meant that Tesla’s teenage vision of using Niagara Falls to generate power was about to come true. Nikola Tesla had done it. He’d lost countless dollars by tearing up his royalty contract, but he knew that without doing so he would never have seen his work achieve its full potential. Finally, the Serbian immigrant had realized his American dream.
* * *
The year 1894 was a busy one for Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing. There was no more competition in the electric battle; the only fight was the internal battle to perfect the machinery and the alternating current system that’d be utilized at Niagara Falls.
Professor Forbes was “let go” by the Niagara Falls Power Company when Westinghouse made it clear that he and his engineers held no confidence in the man’s work. Without Forbes, the Westinghouse team built the first two 5,000-horsepower generators, which were five times more powerful than the generators employed at the Fair. This was completely new territory to travel, but Westinghouse and his crew found their way; they were up to the challenge.
Finally, on August 26, 1895, the first Niagara dynamo came to life at Adams Power Plant in Niagara Falls. Soon after, the second dynamo started up and sent electricity to the first commercial customer, the Pittsburgh Reduction Plant. While there had been difficulties determining the best system to use leading up to August 1893, as well as many obstacles to overcome during 1894 while the team worked to perfect the machinery and its operation, the first month of operation held nothing but success. Everything was proceeding as the electric experts had hoped.
Cataract Construction Company president Edward Dean Adams decided it was time to show off his plant to some esteemed visitors. After all, there was money to be made. Why not impress a who’s who of the investment world while things were running so smoothly?
September 30, 1895, might have been the day when the greatest collection of wealth was in one place at the same time. That’s the day Adams hosted the all-star cast of characters who made up the Cataract Construction Company Board of Directors. With Edward Dean Adams included, the board featured the likes of John Jacob Astor, New York real estate mogul, investor, and inventor, along with seven more of the most celebrated moneymen in the country. These well-dressed, bowler-hat-wearing, cigar-smoking men visited Adams Power Plant and were the first people to receive a guided tour of the astonishing complex.
Over time, others would be welcomed at the Niagara operation with open arms, witnessing the combined power of the falls and electricity. Inventors, scientists, electrical engineers, celebrities—everyone who visited left impressed, often to the point of waxing poetically about the awesome spectacle. Stories, poems, and songs were written about the special place in between two countries.
Adams Power Plant, a symbol of a Westinghouse victory for AC
But one man refused to visit, despite many invitations. The inventor of alternating current himself: Nikola Tesla. From as early as 1892, Tesla had been invited—often begged—to visit Niagara Falls and the plant he had helped inspire.
Why did he choose to turn down the invitations? He’d never overtly answer this question, but perhaps his refusal to visit the awe-inspiring natural wonder had something to do with holding on to those out-of-reach dreams of his. For Tesla, it’s possible he preferred to keep Niagara in his dreams, so as to not let it be corrupted by reality’s unflinching indifference to human fantasies.
* * *
July 19, 1896
Niagara Falls, New York
Tesla had been able to put this off for over five years. The offers had been kind, and the hosts’ flexibility and generosity in accommodating any of his desires had been more than anyone could expect. Still, he’d managed to stay away.
Until now.
Nikola Tesla stepped off the Glen Eyre and shook his head at the display before him. His old friend and colleague George Westinghouse was by his side, along with a few other friendly faces, like William Rankine, Edward Dean Adams, Westinghouse attorney and friend Paul Cravath, and thirteen-year-old George Westinghouse III. They were all talking to each other in separate conversations, everyone leaning close to the next person, almost shouting into a welcoming ear.
Nikola had no idea what they were saying to one another. The moaning current and thunderous crashing torre
nt of water over the sides of the cataract made it impossible to hear anything else. He didn’t mind. In fact, as he stepped closer to the falls he was thankful that the roaring water drowned out all other noises. This was just as he’d imagined. He stared, debating whether this was reality or one of his flashes of light. Perhaps it was both?
Something pressed down on his shoulder, forcing Tesla to turn and see William Rankine, who smiled and nodded. Edward Dean Adams turned around and gestured for everyone to follow.
Soon after, the group approached an imposing limestone building that appeared to be covered with windows.
“Power House Number 1,” said Adams as he stopped at the door.
Nikola Tesla looked at the building, designed by Stanford White, and paused. Did he really want to see what was inside? Or did he want to keep it as it was in his mind?
Tesla entered the building holding his breath. It took only a few moments for the man to exhale, thankful that he’d decided to come inside. Tesla strolled along the specially designed walkways beside the dynamo and closely inspected what he considered a work of art. This wasn’t machinery; it was the Mona Lisa. He asked questions of Adams and nodded time and time again, recognizing the masterful construction of the powerful machine. They’d done a fine job.
The group was led down to the ground floor to take a look at the other alternating current machinery before taking a fancy elevator down to the wheel pits, where they heard the water rushing through the penstock pipes, along with the shifting water turbines moving with great force.
After visiting the transformer building across the other side of the canal—traveling over a limestone bridge—William Rankine escorted the group to the Cataract Hotel, which overlooked the American side of the falls.
They treated themselves to an early lunch, with various members of the press dying to talk to the honored guests, Nikola Tesla the recipient of most of the questions.
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