Lindsey Graham

But when he tried to claim the bonus, he was told it had merely been a joke and that he didn't understand American humor.

Tesla was outraged by what he felt was unfair treatment.

Once a firm believer in Edison, Tesla began to sour on the inventor's methods, considering his discoveries more luck than careful inquiry.

Tesla declared, his method was inefficient to the extreme, for an immense ground had to be covered to get anything at all unless blind chance intervened.

Theory and calculation would have saved him 90% of his labor.

In turn, Edison regarded Tesla as a dandy who had his head in the clouds.

To Edison, Tesla was a poet of science rather than a working inventor.

His ideas were magnificent but utterly impractical.

So as the tensions rose, and in December 1884, after six months of working for Edison, Tesla quit.

He was eager to devote his energies to his own experiments, and he was determined to prove Edison and all other established scientific leaders wrong.

But he realized that he would need a working prototype of his AC motor in order to generate interest.

But without a job, he also needed to earn money.

So he took a page from Edison's American-style practicality and began working to solve a marketable problem, developing a better arc lighting system, one that addressed the flickering and noise that had made existing models so unpopular.

By March 1885, Tesla had a working model, and recognizing the need for control of his inventions, he met with an attorney to file a patent.

With the help of this attorney, he also found two New Jersey businessmen willing to serve as investors, and together they created the Tesla Electric Light and Manufacturing Company.

Tesla received his first patents in the spring of 1886 for an improved arc light and components for a DC generator.

Then he secured a contract with the city of Rahway, New Jersey, to install his new arc lights.

This venture appeared to be succeeding.

The public found the softer glow of Tesla's arc lights more attractive, and city officials liked that they were more reliable and cheaper to run than previous systems.

It seemed that Tesla had a proven and marketable invention.