# Westinghouse acquires Tesla’s polyphase motor and transmission patents

Date: 1888

## The fact

In May 1888 George Westinghouse’s company bought patent rights to [Tesla](/people/nikola-tesla)’s polyphase system of alternating-current dynamos, transformers and motors. The transaction is a licence instrument, not a generating station.

## Context

Westinghouse already sold AC lighting. He needed a practical motor. Cash, notes and a royalty clause were the commercial machinery; a later royalty waiver is a separate worsening Fact.

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

Britannica dates the May 1888 purchase. Smithsonian Magazine’s current-war account independently places the Tesla–Westinghouse licence in the 1888 industrial contest.

Official or archival record: Britannica — Nikola Tesla (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Nikola-Tesla; Encyclopaedia Britannica).

## Significance

Industrial-policy path. High confidence on the licence; medium on any particular dollar figure in later retellings.

A licence is not Niagara. Name Lamme when the machines are built.

## What is established and what is not

Established: Westinghouse acquired Tesla polyphase rights in May 1888. Not established: a unique fortune Tesla ‘should have’ kept, or that Tesla personally built every Westinghouse generator.

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://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-edison-westinghouse-and-tesla-battled-over-electricity-120438080/

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/us-tesla-westinghouse-license-1888