# Tesla presents ‘A New System of Alternate Current Motors and Transformers’ to the AIEE

Date: 1888

## The fact

On 16 May 1888 [Tesla](/people/nikola-tesla) read ‘A New System of Alternate Current Motors and Transformers’ before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers in New York, describing polyphase motors and transformers. It is a dated public paper, not a statute.

## Context

The May 1 patents had just issued. The AIEE lecture is how the profession received the system. George Westinghouse’s subsequent licence is a later Fact. Do not collapse lecture, patents, and Niagara into one wizard night.

Nikola Tesla is not the sole author of every later object, law, or museum label that uses the name. Shared work with courts, excavators, printers, spouses, officials, and later states does not erase a documented role, and it does not make an ancient person the signer of a twentieth-century statute.

## Evidence and sources

IEEE/ETHW and Britannica independently date the May 1888 AIEE presentation. The paper text is a professional-society instrument.

Official or archival record: Engineering and Technology History Wiki — Nikola Tesla (https://ethw.org/Nikola_Tesla; IEEE / ETHW).

## Significance

Industrial-knowledge path. High confidence on the date and venue.

A paper is not a powerhouse. Keep the lag.

## What is established and what is not

Established: AIEE paper 16 May 1888. Not established: that the lecture itself built Niagara, or that every later induction motor is this reading.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.

## People

- Nikola Tesla: https://factrail.ai/people/nikola-tesla

## Drivers

- Industrial-Policy Activism: https://factrail.ai/drivers/industrial-policy-activism

## Sources

- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Nikola-Tesla
- https://ethw.org/Nikola_Tesla

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/us-tesla-aiee-paper-1888