Nikola Tesla studied technologies such as polyphase alternating current and induction motors, connecting changes in current with moving magnetic fields and contributing to the development of AC systems.
Inventions, patents, and commercial partnerships all form part of this technological history. Many exaggerated stories arose later; assessments should rest on specific devices and verifiable records.
History
In 1824, the French physicist François Arago formulated the existence of rotating magnetic fields, termed Arago's rotations. By manually turning switches on and off, Walter Baily demonstrated this in 1879, effectively the first primitive induction motor.
The first commutator-free single-phase AC induction motor was invented by Hungarian engineer Ottó Bláthy; he used the single-phase motor to propel his invention, the electricity meter.
The first AC commutator-free polyphase induction motors were independently invented by Galileo Ferraris and Nikola Tesla, a working motor model having been demonstrated by the former in 1885 and by the latter in 1887. Tesla applied for US patents in October and November 1887 and was granted some of these patents in May 1888. In April 1888, the Royal Academy of Science of Turin published Ferraris's research on his AC polyphase motor detailing the foundations of motor operation. In May 1888 Tesla presented the technical paper A New System for Alternating Current Motors and Transformers to the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE) describing three four-stator-pole motor types: one having a four-pole rotor forming a non-self-starting reluctance motor, another with a wound rotor forming a self-starting induction motor, and the third a true synchronous motor with a separately excited DC supply to the rotor winding.
George Westinghouse, who was developing an alternating current power system at that time, licensed Tesla's patents in 1888 and purchased a US patent option on Ferraris' induction motor concept. Tesla was also employed for one year as a consultant. Westinghouse employee C. F. Scott was assigned to assist Tesla and later took over development of the induction motor at Westinghouse. Steadfast in his promotion of three-phase development, Mikhail Dolivo-Dobrovolsky invented the cage-rotor induction motor in 1889 and the three-limb transformer in 1890. Furthermore, he claimed that Tesla's motor was not practical because of two-phase pulsations, which prompted him to persist in his three-phase work. Although Westinghouse achieved its first practical induction motor in 1892 and developed a line of polyphase 60 hertz induction motors in 1893, these early Westinghouse motors were two-phase motors with wound rotors until B. G. Lamme developed a rotating bar winding rotor.
The General Electric Company (GE) began developing three-phase induction motors in 1891. By 1896, General Electric and Westinghouse signed a cross-licensing agreement for the bar-winding-rotor design, later called the squirrel-cage rotor. Arthur E. Kennelly was the first to bring out the full significance of complex numbers (using j to represent the square root of minus one) to designate the 90º rotation operator in analysis of AC problems. GE's Charles Proteus Steinmetz improved the application of AC complex quantities and developed an analytical model called the induction motor Steinmetz equivalent circuit.
Induction motor improvements flowing from these inventions and innovations were such that a 100-horsepower induction motor built in the 1970s had the same mounting dimensions as a 7.5-horsepower motor in 1897.
Construction
The stator of an induction motor consists of poles carrying supply current to induce a magnetic field that penetrates the rotor. To optimize the distribution of the magnetic field, windings are distributed in slots around the stator, with the magnetic field having the same number of north and south poles. Induction motors are most commonly run on single-phase or three-phase power, but two-phase motors exist; in theory, induction motors can have any number of phases. Many single-phase motors having two windings can be viewed as two-phase motors, since a capacitor is used to generate a second power phase 90° from the single-phase supply and feeds it to the second motor winding. Single-phase motors require some mechanism to produce a rotating field on startup. Induction motors using a squirrel-cage rotor winding may have the rotor bars skewed slightly to smooth out torque in each revolution.