Tesla-Era Electrical Science

This page is a disciplined starting point for comparing Steinmetz with Tesla-era electrical science. It does not claim that Steinmetz and Tesla held the same theory. It identifies the topics where careful source-by-source comparison is worth doing.

Working Boundary

The current repo is Steinmetz-first. Tesla source passages are not yet ingested into the same pipeline. Therefore, this page can only make strong statements about the Steinmetz side of the comparison. Tesla-side claims must wait until Tesla sources have source IDs, scans/OCR, page references, and claim-layer labels.

Current status: this is a comparison framework. It is not a completed Tesla-Steinmetz evidence page.

Real Overlap Worth Investigating

Topic	Steinmetz Route	Comparison Question
Alternating current	Symbolic Method	How does Steinmetz’s systematized AC calculation compare with Tesla’s apparatus-centered AC work?
Resonance and oscillation	Oscillation And Damping	Where do the two writers treat resonance as calculation, apparatus behavior, or experimental regime?
High-frequency phenomena	High-Frequency Surges	Which passages are about industrial surges, and which are about experimental high-frequency generation?
Electric waves	Electric Waves	Do both use wave language in the same technical sense, or only in overlapping vocabulary?
Lightning and surges	Lightning And Surges	How does Steinmetz’s protective-engineering framing compare with Tesla’s high-potential experimental framing?
Ether and field language	Ether And Field Evidence	When either writer uses ether or field language, what physical claim is actually being made?

Steinmetz-Side Evidence Already In The Archive

AC PhenomenaSymbolic method, complex quantities, impedance, reactance, admittance, harmonics, transformers, and AC machinery.Transient PhenomenaTemporary terms, condenser discharge, oscillations, distributed constants, standing waves, traveling waves, and surges.Electric Discharges 1911Lecture route for discharges, waves, impulses, and transients in a more readable form.Electric Discharges 1914Later expanded edition for edition-aware transient and impulse comparison.Source Visual MapsFigure candidates and promoted crops that may support apparatus and wave comparisons.Source Formula MapsFormula candidates for comparing mathematical treatment rather than vocabulary alone.

What Must Not Be Claimed Yet

• That Tesla and Steinmetz meant the same thing by every shared term.
• That Steinmetz’s engineering equations prove Tesla’s broader experimental claims.
• That Tesla’s apparatus descriptions prove Steinmetz held a nonmodern ontology.
• That ether references across authors are automatically equivalent.
• That later alternative-science interpretations are historical Steinmetz claims.

Next Evidence Needed

Parallel Tesla source passages must be added before this page can draw strong conclusions. The eventual Tesla layer should use the same source-isolation fields already defined for Steinmetz: person, source, chapter/page, claim type, interpretation layer, confidence, and verification status.

The proper next build step is not to write conclusions. It is to ingest Tesla primary sources into a separate source domain, then build passage-paired comparisons for alternating current, resonance, discharges, wireless transmission, and high-frequency effects.