Word Count: 1401″Were we to seize and eliminate from ourindustrial world the results of Mr. Tesla’s work,the wheels of industry would cease to turn, ourelectric cars and trains would stop, our townswould be dark, our mills would be dead and idle. Yes, so far reaching is his work that it has becomethe warp and woof of industry. . . His name marksan epoch in the advance of electrical science.
From that work has sprung a revolution. . . ” -B. A.
Behrend If you were to go to an encyclopedia andtried to find out who invented the radio, X- rays,and the tube amplifier, this is what you would find:radio was invented by Marconi, X- rays byRoentgen, and the tube amplifier by de Forest. While you’re there, look to see who invented thefluorescent bulb, neon lights, the speedometer, thebasics of radar, and the microwave oven. I don’tknow who the encyclopedias say invented thosethings, but I bet it won’t give any mention of a manby the name of . In fact, I bet theywon’t give much mention of Tesla for any of themany things he invented.
We can thank ThomasEdison for this. Nikola Tesla was born in Smiljian,Croatia at precisely midnight on July 9/10, 1856. Not a lot is known about his early childhood. Hisfather was an orthodox priest, and his mother,though unschooled, was highly intelligent. Teslahad an extraordinary memory, and he spoke sixlanguages.
He Spent four years studying math,physics, and mechanics at the Polytechnic Instituteat Graz. Tesla first came to America in 1884,when he was 28. He worked for Thomas Edison. Edison, at the time, had just patented the lightbulb,and needed a system to distribute the electricity.
One of Tesla’s gifts was an understanding ofelectricity. Edison promised Tesla large amountsof money if he could work out the kinks inEdison’s DC system of electricity. In the end,Tesla saved Edison over $100,000 (which wouldbe millions today), but Edison refused to live up tohis end of the bargain. Tesla quit, and Edisonspent the rest of his life trying to stifle Tesla’sreputation. Tesla devised a system for electricity,AC, which was better than Edison’s DC system ofelectricity. AC (Tesla’s system) is what is used inour homes today.
AC offered many advantagesover DC. AC could be transmitted over largedistances through thin wires. DC electricityrequired a large power plant every square mile,and the transmission through very thick cables. Asystem of transmission would be incompletewithout devices to run on them. Seeing that therewere none, Tesla invented the predecessors to themotors used in every appliance in our houses.
Inventing these motors was not simple, sincescientists of the late 1800’s were convinced thatbecause no motor could be devised for an ACsystem, trying to develop a motor for it was wasteof time. After all, AC current reverses direction 60times a second, which would make the motor rockback and forth and never get anywhere. Teslaeasily solved this problem and proved everyonewrong by developing a working motor for the ACsystem. In May 1885, word of the AC systemwas heard by George Westinghouse. Tesla signedcontract with Westinghouse under which Teslawould receive $2.
50 for each Kilowatt of ACelectricity sold. Tesla finally had the money toconduct all the experiments he wanted. Theproblem was Edison. He had too much invested inhis DC system of electricity.
So Edison tried hisbest to discredit Tesla. He constantly tried toshow that AC electricity was far more dangerousthan DC electricity. Tesla easily countered this. Atthe 1893 World Exposition in Chicago, Teslademonstrated how safe AC electricity was bypassing high frequency AC electricity through hisbody to power light bulbs.
He then shot lightningbolts from his Tesla Coils into the crowd, withoutharm. Tesla had dramatically proven once an forall that AC electricity was safe to use. In addition,Tesla also used Fluorescent bulbs in his lab aboutforty years before they were “invented” byindustry. At worlds fairs and other exhibitions, hetook glass tubes and molded them into the shapesof famous scientists names. These were the firstNeon signs ever.
Tesla also designed the firsthydroelectric plant, located in Niagra Falls. Healso patented the worlds first speedometer. Everything seemed to be going great for Teslathen. But then, the royalties owed to Tesla startedto exceed $1 million, and Westinghouse ran intofinancial trouble. Tesla realized that if his contractremained in effect, Westinghouse would be out ofbusiness and he had no desire to deal withcreditors.
Tesla took his contract and ripped it up!Instead of becoming the worlds first billionaire, hewas paid $216,000 for his patents. In 1898, hedemonstrated the first remote controlled boat atMadison Square Garden. You can thank Tesla forthe remote controls on your Television sets. Tesla’s dream was to give free energy to theworld. In 1900, backed by $150,000 from J.
P. Morgan, Tesla began constructing his “WirelessBroadcast System” tower on Long Island, NewYork. This tower was intended to link the worldstelephone and telegraph services, as well astransmit pictures, stock reports, and weatherinformation around the world. Most peoplethought he was insane for trying this -after all,transmission of voice, picture, and electricity wereunheard of at this time.
Unfortunately, Morgan curthe funding when he realized that it meant freeenergy for the world. An interesting side note:Though Marconi is credited with the invention ofthe radio, in 1943, the U. S. Supreme Court ruledthat Marconi’s patents were invalid due to Tesla’sprevious descriptions. One day, in his Manhattanlab, Tesla created an earthquake.
He managed toget a steam-driven oscillator to vibrate at the samefrequency as the earth. Tesla claimed that, intheory, the same principle could be used to splitthe earth in two. In fact, he tried to prove thattheory. In his Colorado Springs lab in 1899, hesent energy waves all the way through the earth(providing the theory for the earthquake seismicstations of today).
When the waves came back, headded more electricity. The result? A 130 footlightning bolt-the largest man-made lightning boldever! The thunder was heard 22 miles away, andthe entire meadow surrounding the lab had astrange blue glow to it. This was only a warm-upfor his real experiment, but he never got to do thatexperiment because he blew out the local powerplant. At the beginning of World War I, thegovernment tried to come up with a way to detectGerman U-boats.
They put Edison in charge of thesearch. Tesla proposed using energy waves, asystem known as radar. Edison rejected the ideaas ludicrous, and the world had to wait another 25years until it was invented. Tesla’s reward for hislifetime of creativity? The Edison Medal, theprized scientific award. Most prized to everyone,that is, except Tesla. He took it as a slap in theface, after the verbal abuse given to him byEdison.
During the last thirty years of his life, Teslahad many brilliant ideas, but lacked the capital topatent them. Over the course of his life, Teslareceived over 800 different patents, and heprobably would’ve had many more if he’d had themoney. The man who invented the modern worlddied nearly penniless on January 7, 1943, at age86. His funeral was attended by more than 2,000people. Some of the ideas he toyed with in the lastdecades of his life included time travel,anti-gravity, ozone generators, and death rays.
Heclaimed to be able to destroy 10,000 planes, 250miles away. He talked about experiments thatsuggested particles with fractional charges of anelectron, something discovered in 1977: Quarks. What kind of impact did Nikola Tesla have on ourlives? Look around you. Chances are NikolaTesla is somehow responsible for many of thethings you see that make modern life so modern. The radio you listen to, the fluorescent lightsaround you, the motors that run your appliances,and the electricity that runs those motors. Here aresome things you might want to think about: Wherewould we be in had Nikola Tesla never beenBorn, and how much further ahead would we be ifhe had had the money to finance the experimentshe always wanted to? “We are confronted withportentous problems which can not be solved justby providing for our material existence, howeverabundantly.
On the contrary, progress in thisdirection is fraught with hazards and perils not lessmenacing than those born from want and suffering. If we were to release the energy of the atoms ordiscover some other way of developing cheap andunlimited power at any point of the globe thisaccomplishment, instead of being a blessing, mightbring disaster to mankind. . .
The greatest good willcome from the technical improvements tending tounification and harmony, and my wirelesstransmitter is preeminently such. By its means thehuman voice and likeness will be reproducedeverywhere and factories driven thousands ofmiles from waterfalls furnishing the power; aerialmachines will be propelled around the earthwithout a stop and the sun’s energy controlled tocreate lakes and rivers for motive purposes andtransformation of arid deserts into fertile land…”-Nikola Tesla BIBLIOGRAPHY PAGE 1.http://home.nycap.rr.com/useless/tesla/tesla.html 2.http://www.neuronet.pitt.edu/~bogdan/tesla
