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Tesla Electric Company is organised in New York to develop alternating-current motors

In 1887 Tesla, with backers Alfred S. Brown and Charles F. Peck, organised the Tesla Electric Company in New York and set up a laboratory to develop alternating-current motors and distribution apparatus. In the causal graph this event strengthens the driver Industrial-Policy Activism.

Sources: [1][2]

Read the full account

In 1887 Tesla, with backers Alfred S. Brown and Charles F. Peck, organised the Tesla Electric Company in New York and set up a laboratory to develop alternating-current motors and distribution apparatus. It is a corporate instrument, not a finished grid.

Context

He had left Edison Machine Works. Arc-lamp work at Rahway had already failed as a separate company. This 1887 firm is the organisation that produced the 1888 patent suite. Galileo Ferraris’s independent rotating-field work in Turin is contemporaneous and is not erased by a New York letterhead.

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.

Why it matters

Industrial-policy path: a named AC shop. High confidence on the organisation.

A company is not a kilowatt-hour series. Keep Ferraris on the independent record.

Who was responsible

Contribution type and responsibility level for each recorded actor — not sole-author shorthand.

  • Nikola Tesla

    Person

    Direct responsibility

    responsibility level 0.7 · verified

    He was the technical principal. Alfred S. Brown and Charles F. Peck financed the laboratory.

What changed

Fact → Driver → Indicator. Relationship strength orders the paths; it is not the observed indicator movement.

    1. FactTesla Electric Company is organised in New York to develop alternating-current motors
    2. strengthensDriverIndustrial-Policy Activism

    impact weight 0.55 · Effect from 1 April 1887 · verified

Evidence

The sources behind this fact and its verification state.

Verified2 sources on file
  1. 1.Britannica — Nikola TeslaEncyclopaedia Britannica · High credibility · verified
  2. 2.Engineering and Technology History Wiki — Nikola TeslaIEEE / ETHW · High credibility · verified
What the sources establish

IEEE/ETHW’s Tesla biography and Britannica independently date the 1887 company and laboratory. Wikipedia is not used as a source.

Established: Tesla Electric Company and a New York laboratory from 1887. Not established: that the firm already supplied a city, or that it uniquely invented the rotating magnetic field against Ferraris.

Causal path

How this event connects to drivers and indicators in the graph.

  1. ActorNikola Tesla
  2. contributed toFactTesla Electric Company is organised in New York to develop alternating-current motors
  3. strengthensDriverIndustrial-Policy Activism

Cite this page

Factrail. (2026). Tesla Electric Company is organised in New York to develop alternating-current motors. Factrail. https://factrail.ai/facts/us-tesla-electric-company-1887

https://factrail.ai/facts/us-tesla-electric-company-1887

Accessed 16 October 2026.

By the Factrail desk · Method: how we source and score · Last reviewed

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