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Nikola Tesla

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Nikola Tesla (July 9 or July 10, 1856 - January 7, 1943) [Baptism name: Николай; Nikolai] was a Serbian-American inventor and electrical engineer. His most famous contribution to the world was the theory of polyphase alternating current electricity, which he used to build the first induction motor, invented in 1882, as well as developing the designs of numerous other electrical machines and related technology. His theory and many of his patents form the basis for the modern electric power system. Life magazine, in a special double issue, listed Tesla in the "100 Most Important People in the Last 1000 Years". He occupies the 57th position, citing him as "[one of] the most farsighted inventor of the electrical age". They state his work on the rotating magnetic field and alternating currents helped electrify the world. [1]


Nikola Tesla

Tesla is also noted for inventing the Tesla coil and a bladeless turbine (which functions on the principles of fluid viscosity and the boundary layer effect). The scientific compound derived SI unit measuring magnetic flux density or magnetic induction (commonly known as the magnetic field B), the tesla, was named in his honor (at the Conference general des poids et mesures, Paris, 1960).

Biography

Early years

Tesla was born "at the stroke of midnight" during a summer storm and lightning in Croatia [at the time within the Austro-Hungarian Empire] to Serb parents of Valachian origin. The midwife commented, "He'll be a child of the storm," inwhich Djuka replied, "No, of light." His father, Reverend Milutin Tesla, was a priest in the Greek (or, sometimes reported as, Serbian) Orthodox Church. His mother, Duka Mandic, made tools and devices for weaving, carpentry, and crafts. He was on of five children (he had a brother and three sisters). His godfather, who was a Captain in the Krajina army, was Jovan Drenovac. Tesla was baptised in the Old Slavonic Church rite. The Baptism Certificate reports that he was born on June 28 (Julian calendar), and christened by the Serbian priest, Toma Oklobdzija. As an infant, Tesla is believed to have been in poor health frequently. His family moved to Gospic in 1862.

Tesla studied in Karlovac, present day Croatia, then studied electrical engineering at the Austria Politechnic in Graz, Austria (1875). At Austria Politechnic, Tesla studies the uses alternating current. He developes a telephone repeater (or amplifier).

In 1881 he moved to Budapest to work for the telegraph company, American Telephone Company. For awhile he stayed in Maribor, Slovenia; He is employed at his first job as an assistant engineer. Tesla suffers a nervous breakdown during this time. In 1882 he moved to Paris, France, to work as an engineer for the Continental Edison Company. He worked designing improvements to electric motors and equipment. In the same year, Tesla conceives of the induction motor and begins developing various devices that use rotating magnetic fields (inwhich he recieved patents for later in 1888). Tesla visualizes the rotating fields and designs the induction motor "as seen" in his vision. Tesla goes to his mother's side from Paris arriving hours before her death in 1892. Her last words were to him was, "You've arrived, Nidzo, my dear." After his mother's death, Tesla fell ill. He spends two to three weeks recouperating in Gospic and Tomingaj. A home-spun embroidered travel bag was kept by Tesla from his mother all his life.

Middle years

In 1884, leaving the warfare in his brithplace behind, Tesla moves to the United States of America to accept a job with the Edison Company in New York City. He arrived in America with 4 cents to his name, a book of poetry, and a letter of recommendation (from Charles Batchelor, his manager in his previous job). Tesla supports his brother-in-law's church in Gospic while in America.

Early employment

Telsa worked for Thomas Edison for a time. Edison offered $50,000 to Tesla for improvements in Edison’s DC dynamos. Tesla worked nearly a year to redesign the inferior construction. Upon returning to Edison and inquiring about the $50,000, Edison replied, “Tesla, you don’t understand our American humor.” Tesla resigned.

In 1886, Tesla forms his own company, Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing. The intial financial investors in the company disagree with Tesla on his plan for a alternating current motor and eventually relieve Tesla of his duties at the company. Tesla is unemployed after leaving the company for a bit of time. Tesla works on a New York street gang, as a laborer, from 1886 to 1887 to raise capital to eat and for his next project. In 1887, Tesla constructs the initial brushless alternate current induction motor. Tesla demonstrates the brushless two phase one-fifth horsepower induction motor to the American Institute of Electrical Engineers in 1888. Also in 1888, Tesla develops the principles of his Tesla coil. He starts to work for Westinghouse around this period.

X-rays

In April 1887, Nikola Tesla begins to investigate what are later called X-rays using his own devices as well as Crookes tubes. Tesla did this by experimenting with high voltages and vacuum tubes. From Nikola Tesla's technical publications, it is indicated that he invented and developed a special single-electrode X-ray tube. Tesla's tubes differ from other X-ray tubes in that they have no target electrode. He stated these facts in his 1897 X-ray lecture before the New York Academy of Sciences. The modern term for this is the bremsstrahlung process, in which a high-energy secondary X-ray emission is produced when charged particles (such as an electron) pass through matter. In 1891, Tesla establishes his Houston Street laboratory in New York. Tesla lights vacuum tubes wirelessly in the labortory, providing evidence for the potential of preforming wireless power transmission.

By 1892, Tesla became aware of certain characteristics later identified by Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen as effects of X-rays. Tesla performed several experiments with them but did not declare publicly his findings. Much of his research was lost in the 1895 Houston Street lab fire. His later X-ray experimentation by vacuum high field emissions lead him to alert the scientific community first to the biological hazards associated with X-ray exposure.

Friendship

Around 1889, he becomes a USA citizen. Tesla also developed a close and lasting friendship with Mark Twain around this time. They spent quite a bit of time together from time to time (in Tesla's laboratory and among other places).

Wireless demonstration

In St. Louis, Missouri, Nikola Tesla made the first public demonstration of radio communication in 1893. Addressing the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia and the National Electric Light Association, he described and demonstrated in detail the principles of radio communication. The apparatus that he used contained all the elements that were incorporated into radio systems before the development of the vacuum tube.

IEEE VP term

Tesla served as the Vice-President of the IEEE between the years of 1892 and 1894. During the period 1893 to 1895, Tesla investigated high frequency alternating currents. He discovered the skin effect, designed tuned circuits, invented a machine for inducing sleep, as well as cordless gas discharge lamps, and transmitted electromagnetic energy without wires, effectively building the first radio transmitter. In years later, Tesla experimented with high voltage electricity and the possibility of transmitting and distributing large amounts of electrical energy over long distances without using wires or cables. He also conceived the science of telegeodynamics, now known as seismology, and explained that a long sequence of small explosions could be used to find ores underground and create earthquakes large enough to destroy the earth - he did not experiment with this as he felt there would not be "a desirable outcome."

War of Currents

During this time, direct current was the standard, and Edison was not disposed to lose all his patent royalties to a former employee. Adversaries due to Edison's promotion of direct current for electric power distribution over the more efficient alternating current advocated by Tesla, Edison (or, reportedly, one of Edison's employees) imployed the tactics of misusing Tesla's patents to construct the first electric chair for the state of New York in order to promote the idea that alternating currents were deadly.

In his work with the rotary magnetic fields, Tesla devises the transmission of power system over long distance. Tesla partners with George Westinghouse to commericalize this system of power transmission. Westinghouse had previously bought the rights to Tesla's polyphase patents and other patents for the alternating current transformers. Proposals from experts to harness the Niagara Falls as a means of generating electricity is announced. Against General Electric and Edison's proposal, Tesla's alternating current system wins the international Niagara Falls Commission contract. The commission is lead by Lord Kelvin and backed by entreprenuers (such as J.P. Morgan, Lord Rothschild, and John Jacob Astor). In 1893, work begins on the Niagara Falls generation project and Tesla's technology is applied to transmit electromagnetic energy from the Niagara Falls.

Some doubt that the system would generate enough electricity to power industry in Buffalo. Tesla was sure it would work. Tesla expressed that Niagara Falls had the ability to power the entire eastern United States. On November 16, 1896, first transmission of electrical power between two cities is sent from Niagara Falls to industries in Buffalo, New York from the first commercial two-phase power plants (known as hydroelectric generators) at the Edward Dean Adams Station. The hydroelectric generators are built by Westinghouse Electric Corporation from Tesla's alternating current system patent designs. Tesla's system designs allievated the limitations of the previous direct current methods. The nameplates on the generators bear Tesla's name. Tesla also sets the 60 hertz standard for North America while working for Westinghouse. It takes five years to complete the whole facility.

With the financial backing of George Westinghouse, Tesla's alternating current replaced direct current, enormously extending the range and improving the safety and efficiency of power distribution. Tesla's Niagara Falls system marked the end of Edison's roadmap for electrical tansmission (and later Edison's General Electric company converts to the alternating current system).

Remorte control

At the age of 42, Tesla demonstrates a remote controlled boat to the United States military. Tesla believes that the military will want things such as radio-guided torpedoes. These devices hsve an innovative coherer and a series of logic gates. Mark Twain writes Tesla over the demonstrations, though the military take little interest in his device. Radio remote control remains a novelty until the Space Age.

Wardenclyffe

In 1900, Tesla began planning the Wardenclyffe Tower facility. In 1901, the construction project begisns on the land near Long Island Sound. The architect Stanford White designed the Wardenclyffe facility main building. Tesla's project was funded by influencial industrialists and others venture capitalist. In June 1902, Tesla's laboratory operations were moved to Wardenclyffe from his previous Houston street Laboratory. In 1903, the tower structure nears completion, although it was not yet functional due to a design error. In Electrical World and Engineer (March 5, 1904), Tesla reportedly determines the mode of ball lightning formation and produces them artificially. In May 1905, Tesla's alternating current motors and methods of power transmission patents expire, stoping the royalty payments and causing sever reduction to the fundinig of the Wardenclyffe Tower. Tesla advertised services of the Wardenclyffe facility to find alternative funding to little success. Around this time, Tesla also designs the Tesla turbine at Wardenclyffe and produces Tesla coils for sale to various businesses to generate funding. Between 1912 and 1915, Tesla's finances unraveled. Newspapers comment that Wardenclyffe is "Tesla's million-dollar folly."

Nobel rumors

It is believed that Tesla and Edison were to share the Nobel Prize of 1912 (or 1915; some accounts differ). It was possible that Tesla was told of the plans of the physics award committee and let it be known that he would not share the award with Edison.

Later years

Prior to the First World War, Tesla looked overseas for investors to fund his research. When World War I started, Tesla lost funding he had been receiving from his european patents. Wardenclyffe Tower was also demolished towards the end of WWI. Of the 700-plus patents accumulated by Tesla, the most controversial today is his Wardenclyffe Tower. The tower was meant to be the start of a national (and later global) system of towers broadcasting power to users as radio waves. Instead of supplying electricity through a current grid system, users would simply "receive" power through antennas on their roofs. At the time the power grid was quite limited in terms of who it reached and the Tower represented a way of significantly reducing the cost of "electrifying" the countryside.

Though never completed successfully in Tesla's lifetime due to lack of funding, and finally dismantled for scrap during wartime, its principles are being implemented by a U.S. military project in Alaska, spanning several hundred acres. However, Project HAARP, as it is called, supplies a different objective. While Tesla's tower was to be his supreme test of the applicability of transmitted power, HAARP is being used to study ionospheric effects on radio communication. Wardenclyffe was also the genesis of the current search for practical applications for focused wave and particle beams, such as the laser and maser.

In 1915, Tesla files a lawsuit against Marconi attempting, unsuccessfully, to obtain a court injunction against the claims of Marconi. Around 1916, Tesla files for bankruptcy because he owes back taxes. He is living in poverty and does not have enough money to pay for the merger necessities. Tesla starts to exhibit more pronounced symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder in the years following. He often felt compelled to walk around a block a number of times before entering a building, demanded a stack of a certain number of folded cloth napkins be beside his plate at every meal, etc. The nature of OCD was little understood at the time and no treatments were available, so his symptoms were considered by some to be evidence of partial insanity and this probably hurt his career. He is staying at the Waldorf-Astoria, renting on an arrangement for deferred payments. In 1917, around the time that the Wardenclyffe Tower is demolished, Tesla receives the highest and most significant honor the IEEE can award to any person who uses scientific knowledge to solve practical problem, the Edison Medal. The incongruity between what might have been expected and the situation then probably did not pass without notice by Tesla.

In 1931, Time magazine puts Tesla on the cover.

In 1935, many of Marconi's patents related to the radio are declared no longer valid by the United States Court of Claims. The Court of Claims decides that Marconi's radio patents could not be infringed upon, because the prior work of Tesla (specifically US645576 and US649621) had anticipated Marconi's later works. Tesla attains his last patent in 1928 on January 3, an apparatus for aerial transportation which is the first instance of VTOL aircraft. When he was 81, Tesla challenged Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, announcing he was working on a dynamic theory of gravity and argued that a field of force was a better concept and did away with the curvature of space. Unfortunately the theory was never published, but Tesla may have been developing a theory about gravity waves. This theory provides a basis for plasma cosmology.

Nikola Tesla Memorial at Niagara Falls
Nikola Tesla Memorial at Niagara Falls. Tesla was the first to successfully convert the mechanical energy of flowing water to electrical energy.

Death and afterwards

Tesla's dies alone in the Hotel New Yorker, room 3327. Tesla died of heart failure some time between the evening of January 5 and the morning of January 8, 1943. Despite selling his AC electricity patents, Tesla was essentially destitute and died with significant debts. At the time of his death, Tesla had been working on some form of teleforce weapon, or Death Ray, the secrets of which he had offered to the US War Department on the morning of January 5.

Immediately after his death became known, the Federal Bureau of Investigation instructs the Office of Alien Property to take possession of Tesla's papers and property, irrespective of the fact of his citizenship. All of Tesla's personal effects were seized on the advice of presidential advisors. J. Edgar Hoover declared the case most secret, because of the nature of Tesla's inventions and patents. Tesla's Serbian-Orthodox family and the Yugoslav embassy struggled with American authorities to gain these item after Tesla's death due to the potential significance of some of Tesla's research. Eventually, Tesla's nephew, Sava Kosanovich, attains some of his personal effects (which are are now housed in the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade, Yugoslavia).

Tesla disputed the claim that Marconi invented radio. An ongoing lawsuit regarding this was finally resolved after his death, with the government granting Tesla the patent on radio devices. This decision was based on the fact that there was prior work existing before the establishment of Marconi's patent. At the time, the United States Army was involved in a patent infringement lawsuit with Marconi regarding radio, leading some to posit that the government granted Tesla the patent on order to nullify any claims Marconi would have to recompensation.

In 1976, a bronze statue of Tesla is placed at Niagara Falls.

Perhaps because of Tesla's personal eccentricity and the dramatic nature of his demonstrations, conspiracy theories about applications of his work persist. The common Hollywood stereotype of the "mad scientist" mirrors Tesla's real-life persona, or at least a caricature of it—which may be no accident considering that many of the earliest such movies (including the first movie version of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein) were produced by Tesla's old rival, Thomas Edison.

There are at least two films describing Tesla's life. In the first, arranged for TV, Tesla was portrayed by Serb actor Rade Šerbedžija.

Education

  • Elementary school: Gospic (Croatia)
  • Secondary school: Karlovac (Croatia)

Undergraduate -

  • Baccalaureate of Physics: Austrian Polytechnic Institute (Graz)
  • Baccalaureate of Mathematics: Austrian Polytechnic Institute (Graz)
  • Baccalaureate of Mechanical Engineering: Austrian Polytechnic Institute (Graz)
  • Baccalaureate of Electrical Engineering: Austrian Polytechnic Institute (Graz)

Graduate Studies -

  • PhD of Physics: University of Prague (Prague)

Association Memebership

  • Vice-President of the IEEE
  • Life Fellow IEEE
  • Fellow American Association for the Advancement of Science,
  • Fellow American Electro-Therapeutic Association
  • New York Academy of Sciences
  • American Philosophical Society
  • National Electric Light Association
  • Serbian Academy of Sciences
  • Societe International des Electriciens
  • Societe Francaise de Physique
  • Institution of Electrical Engineers [British]

Quotes

"Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality." - Nikola Tesla

"Tesla has contributed more to electrical science than any man up to his time." - Lord Kelvin

"[Tesla is] an eminent pioneer in the realm of high frequency currents... I congratulate [him] on the great successes of [his] life's work." - Albert Einstein

"The world, I think, will wait a long time for Nikola Tesla's equal in achievement and imagination." - Edwin H. Armstrong

"... all scientific men will be delighted to extend their warmest congratulations to Tesla and to express their appreciation of his great contributions to science." - Ernest Rutherford

"Tesla is entitled to the enduring gratitude of mankind." - Arthur Compton

"I am sending [Dr. Tesla]... my gratitude and my respect in overflowing measure." - Robert Millikan

"The evolution of electric power from the discovery of Faraday to the initial great installation of the Tesla polyphase system in 1896 is undoubtedly the most tremendous event in all engineering history." - Charles F. Scott

"[Dr. Tesla's] lectures opened a new physical world to me... [He was] one of the kindest men I've ever encountered. The hours which I was permitted to spend together with [him] will always be among the fondest memories of my life." - Jonathan Zenneck

See also: Tesla patents

External Links, Resources, and References

Biography

  • The Man Who Invented the Twentieth Century: Nikola Tesla, Forgotten Genius of Electricity, Robert Lomas, Headline Book Publishing, 1999. ISBN 0747262659
  • Tesla, Man Out Of Time, Margaret Cheney, 1981 (first edition), 1993 (Barnes & Noble Books). ISBN 0-88029-419-1. 320 pages.
  • Tesla, Master of Lightning, Margaret Cheney & Robert Uth, Barnes & Noble Books, NY, 1999. ISBN 0-7607-1005-8. 184 pages.
  • Prodigal Genius: The Life of Nikola Tesla, John J. O'Neill, Angriff Press, ISBN 0-913022-40-3. 326 pages.
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