# The Adams hydroelectric plant at Niagara begins commercial alternating-current generation

Date: 1895

## The fact

On 26 August 1895 the Adams No. 1 generating station of the Niagara Falls Power Company first supplied polyphase alternating current to local industry. IEEE later marked the plant as a milestone. [Tesla](/people/nikola-tesla)’s name and patents were on the system; the machines were Westinghouse’s.

## Context

Edward Dean Adams’s company chose AC after advice that included George Forbes. Tunnel construction killed workers; that labour cost is part of the independent industrial record and is not dumped onto Tesla as a personal hanging.

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’s Adams milestone dates 26 August 1895. Britannica independently ties Tesla’s polyphase patents to the Niagara installation.

Official or archival record: ETHW — Adams Hydroelectric Generating Plant, 1895 (https://ethw.org/Milestones:Adams_Hydroelectric_Generating_Plant,_1895; IEEE / ETHW).

## Significance

High confidence on the plant date; medium on Tesla’s shop-floor share versus Lamme and Westinghouse.

Name Adams, Westinghouse and Lamme. A patent is not a turbine pit.

## What is established and what is not

Established: Adams plant in commercial AC service 26 August 1895, using Tesla-system polyphase generation. Not established: that Tesla uniquely ‘built Niagara’, or that this was the first hydroelectric plant in all history.

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

- Energy Security: https://factrail.ai/drivers/energy-security

## Sources

- https://ethw.org/Milestones:Adams_Hydroelectric_Generating_Plant,_1895
- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Nikola-Tesla

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/us-tesla-niagara-adams-1895