Westinghouse had made a bad deal with Tesla, paying him by a measure that
would have destroyed Westinghouse financially.  

I forget exactly what the deal was, like so much per kilowatt hour produced
by the equipment GE made or something like that.  As it scaled up the
royalties became enormous and cost prohibitive.

Tesla declined the money entirely.  He and George Westinghouse were
friends.  If Tesla had simply cut way back on the deal it would have
provided him a fair compensation and allowed him to pursue his science, but
instead he threw it out entirely.

His life was filled with poor decisions of this type.  He loved his science
but had a very poor mind for the economics of technology.

It was such a shame.  I am sure we lost many amazing insights because of
this.


Norm
S/V Bandersnatch
Lying Julington Creek
30 07.695N 081 38.484W



> Well, as I recall, according to an article in "Invention and Technology" 
> magazine some years back, he DID have a big percentage of Westinghouse's 
> profits by contract for his poly-phase AC generating stations at Niagara 
> Falls, but they soon realized that their future investors would not be 
> happy with that deal and reneged on the contract. If they had not, 
> Telsa's ancestors today would probably be very wealthy indeed!
>
> Or maybe he would have just built even larger wireless transmission 
> towers and burned through all that money also. -Ken
> 

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