NIKOLA TESLA COMPANY TWICE SIGNED STOCK CERTIFICATE
TESLA, NIKOLA. 1856-1943. Document Signed Twice ('Nikola Tesla'), being a stock certificate for 5 shares in the Nikola Tesla Company awarded to 'Treasurer of Nikola Tesla Company,' 1 p, oblong folio (168 x 269 mm), New York, April 2, 1904 & November 6, 1905, countersigned by [Wm. B Hawkins?] as Secretary and transferred on the verso to C. Edwin Hawkins and signed again by Tesla as 'Pres., Treas.' with George Scherff as witness, blindstamp of Nikola Tesla Company to lower left.
Provenance: Hawkins family, by descent.

The Nikola Tesla Company was launched in February 1895 by Tesla and Edward Dean Adams. Adams, as president of the Cataract Construction Company which he had organized to take advantage of the energy potential of Niagara Falls, had met Tesla when the latter was promoting the Westinghouse Company's Tesla-developed polyphase AC motor to transmit the tremendous power to Buffalo, N.Y. and eventually New York City. Adams did choose Westinghouse to supply the contract for what became one of the first alternating current hydroelectric plants.
He was impressed enough with Tesla to later help him market his many patents. Unfortunately, they failed to attract investors. This would account for the complete lack of Nikola Tesla Company stock certificates on the collectible market. Tesla was a great innovative thinker, but lacked the business savvy and guidance to know how to focus his inventions. Earlier he had worked with Charles Peck and Alfred S. Brown to great success in selling his AC motor patents to Westinghouse, but Peck had died in 1890. 'Without someone like Peck to provide a mix of encouragement and critical advice, Tesla became intoxicated by the beauty of his ideal for wireless power and was not inclined to adjust his ideal to suit practical and business considerations' (Carlson p 406). The Nikola Tesla Company stock certificates offered here are the first that we've seen on the market. Carlson, Bernard W. Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age. Princeton & Oxford: [2015].