Nikola Tesla's Assistant Talks About Work in the 1880s: Restored Video and Audio

Before becoming Nikola Tesla's lab assistant in 1888, Charles Scott worked several jobs in the electricity field. In this video recorded in 1933, he describes those experiences. This video has been colorized, speed-adjusted and restored with audio enhancements for clarity.Show more

In 1888, Charles Scott joined the engineering staff of the Westinghouse Company, Pittsburgh, PA. He was assigned to assist the legendary engineer-inventor, Nikola Tesla, in developmental work on Tesla’s AC motor. The Westinghouse Company had purchased the patent rights to Tesla’s motor in May, 1888 and arranged for the inventor to continue his work at the Pittsburgh plant. Scott later wrote that the Tesla motor in its simple form required two alternating currents, differing in phase, and sustaining a relation similar to the two driving rods of a locomotive which are set at 90 degrees so that, when one is at its inactive position, the other exerts maximum effort. Their initial efforts to modify the motor to operate from a single-phase system proved unsuccessful, resulting in the decision to develop a two-phase system. By 1892 Westinghouse reported that it could build Tesla motors with ratings of 1–1000 hp.

This video is made for educational purposes for fair use under section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976.