He Was Ousted Fromm His Own Company And Did Manual Labor For $2 A Day
Tesla was working on patenting an arc lighting system shortly after leaving the Edison business; this system may have been the same one he had created there. He visited with Lemuel W. Serrell, a patent lawyer who had formerly represented Thomas Edison, in March 1885 to get assistance with filing the applications. Robert Lane and Benjamin Vail, two businessmen that Serrell introduced to Tesla, agreed to finance the Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing, an arc lighting manufacturing and utility firm that bears his name. As he built and installed the system in Rahway, New Jersey, Tesla worked for the remainder of the year to get the patents, which included an improved DC generator and were the first ones granted to him in the US. The technical press noticed Tesla's new system and remarked on its cutting-edge characteristics.
Tesla's concepts for novel designs of alternating current motors and electrical transmission machinery received little attention from investors. After the utility was operational in 1886, they chose to operate only an electric utility because they felt that the manufacturing portion of the business was too competitive. They disbanded Tesla's business and established a brand-new utility corporation, leaving the inventor jobless. Tesla even lost custody of his own patents, which he had given to the business in exchange for stock. One of the interesting facts about Nikola Tesla is for $2 a day, he was forced to dig ditches and perform other electrical repairs. Later in life, Tesla recounted that part of 1886 as a time of hardship, writing “My high education in various branches of science, mechanics, and literature seemed to me like a mockery”.
