Tesla’s World Fair – Why were all traces destroyed after 6 months?

Tesla’s World Fair or The Chicago World’s Fair also known as the World’s Columbian Exposition had been coveted by both Westinghouse with Tesla’s AC system and Thomas Edison with his DC system. Hard work, perseverance and extreme confidence from both parties turned the competition into quite a blazing fire of the minds. Problem was, there were no electrical towers or power lines. 

But it was Nikola Tesla with his novel AC Current Distribution that won over Edison’s. Westinghouse and Tesla got the contract to light up the fair… which put an end to “The War of the Currents” between Tesla and Edison.

Nikola Tesla AC Motor (1883): Tesla carried detailed plans for this AC motor in his head (a particular talent of his) until he could build a physical model the next year. The alternating current created magnetic poles that reversed themselves without mechanical aid, as DC motors required, and caused an armature (the revolving part of any electromechanical device) to whirl around the motor. This was his rotating magnetic field put into practice as a motor; within two years, he would use it in AC generators and transformers as well.

The Columbian Exposition a/k/a Tesla’s World Fair opened on May 1, 1893. That evening, President Grover Cleveland pushed a button and a hundred thousand incandescent lamps illuminated the fairground’s neoclassical buildings. This “City of Light” was the work of Tesla, Westinghouse and twelve new thousand-horsepower AC generation units located in the Hall of Machinery.

In the Great Hall of Electricity, the Tesla polyphase system of alternating current power generation and transmission was proudly displayed. For the twenty-seven million people who attended the fair, it was dramatically clear that the power of the future was AC. From that point forward more than 80 percent of all the electrical devices ordered in the United States were for alternating current thanks to the great experiment at Tesla’s World Fair.