In 1882, Tivadar Puskás got Tesla another job in Paris with the Continental Edison Company.[38] Tesla began working in what was then a brand new industry, installing indoor incandescent lighting citywide in the form of an electric power utility. The company had several subdivisions and Tesla worked at the Société Electrique Edison, the division in the Ivry-sur-Seine suburb of Paris in charge of installing the lighting system. There he gained a great deal of practical experience in electrical engineering. Management took notice of his advanced knowledge in engineering and physics and soon had him designing and building improved versions of generating dynamos and motors.[39] They also sent him on to troubleshoot engineering problems at other Edison utilities being built around France and in Germany.
A move to the US
In 1884, Edison manager Charles Batchelor, who had been overseeing the Paris installation, was brought back to the US to manage the Edison Machine Works, a manufacturing division situated in New York City, and asked that Tesla be brought to the US as well.[41] In June 1884, Tesla emigrated to the United States.[42] He began working almost immediately at the Machine Works on Manhattan‘s Lower East Side, an overcrowded shop with a workforce of several hundred machinists, laborers, managing staff, and 20 “field engineers” struggling with the task of building the large electric utility in that city.[43] As in Paris, Tesla was working on troubleshooting installations and improving generators.[44] Historian W. Bernard Carlson notes Tesla may have met company founder Thomas Alva Edison only a couple of times.[43]One of those times was noted in Tesla’s autobiography where, after staying up all night repairing the damaged dynamos on the ocean liner SS Oregon, he ran into Batchelor and Edison, who made a quip about their “Parisian” being out all night. After Tesla told them he had been up all night fixing the Oregon Edison commented to Batchelor that “this is a damned good man.”[40] One of the projects given to Tesla was to develop an arc lamp-based street lighting system.[45][46] Arc lighting was the most popular type of street lighting but it required high voltages and was incompatible with the Edison low-voltage incandescent system, causing the company to lose contracts in cities that wanted street lighting as well. Tesla’s designs were never put into production, possibly because of technical improvements in incandescent street lighting or because of an installation deal that Edison cut with an arc lighting company.[47]
Tesla had been working at the Machine Works for a total of six months when he quit.[43] What event precipitated his leaving is unclear. It may have been over a bonus he did not receive, either for redesigning generators or for the arc lighting system that was shelved.[45] Tesla had previous run-ins with the Edison company over unpaid bonuses he believed he had earned.[48][49] In his own biography, Tesla stated the manager of the Edison Machine Works offered a $50,000 bonus to design “twenty-four different types of standard machines” “but it turned out to be a practical joke”.[50] Later versions of this story have Thomas Edison himself offering and then reneging on the deal, quipping “Tesla, you don’t understand our American humor.”[51][52] The size of the bonus in either story has been noted as odd since Machine Works manager Batchelor was stingy with pay[53] and the company did not have that amount of cash (equivalent to $12 million today) on hand.[54][55] Tesla’s diary contains just one comment on what happened at the end of his employment, a note he scrawled across the two pages covering December 7, 1884, to January 4, 1885, saying “Good by to the Edison Machine Works”.[56][46]