There’s a series called American Genius. They had an episode on Tesla Edison. They show Edison giving Tesla an “impossible” task to go repair a motor of one of Edison’s clients. He comes back the next day with problem solved. Good stuff in there of his thoughts on motors in college in Europe.
When Tesla first arrived in NY in the late 1880s, he found it hard to find work and was forced to take a series of brutal day-labor jobs, like ditch-digging (a typical experience for a European immigrant at the time).
Supposedly, one day he was laboring near the large Edison DC plant when Edison - fed up with his generators always breaking down under heavy loads - offered a large sum of money to anyone who could solve the problem.
Tesla took up his offer, and redesigned the generator to make a more natural flow for the electrons - a simple but brilliant solution that, besides increasing the generator’s power, showed his great understanding of the subject. But when he went to collect, Edison brushed him off with a line like “Oh Tesla, you just don’t understand our American sense of humor”.
That was the start of a life-long feud.