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Nikola Tesla

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Nikola Tesla (July 9 or July 10, 1856 - January 7, 1943) 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.



Nikola Tesla

Tesla is also noted for inventing the Tesla coil and a bladeless turbine that functioned on fluid viscosity. 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 on the stroke of midnight in the village of Smiljan in Lika area which is today in Croatia [at the time within the Austro-Hungarian Empire] to Serb parents of Valachian origin. His father, Reverend Milutin Tesla, was a priest in the Serbian Orthodox Church. His mother, Duka Mandic, made tools and devices for weaving, carpentry, and handiwork.

His family moved to Gospic in 1862.

Tesla studied in Karlovac, present day Croatia, then studied electrical engineering at the Austria Politechnic in Graz.

In 1881 he moved to Budapest to work for the telegraph company. For a while he stayed in Maribor,Slovenia; He is employed at his first job as an assistant engineer. In 1882 he moved to Paris to work as an engineer for the Continental Edison Company. He worked designing improvements to electric motors and equipment.

Middle years

In 1884 Tesla moved 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 his previous job.

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. He then became his adversary due to Edison's promotion of direct current for electric power distribution over the more efficient alternating current advocated by Tesla. At the time, direct current was the standard, and Edison was not disposed to lose all his patent royalties to a former employee. A huge political battle ensued, including the use of Tesla's patents (by one of Edison's employees) to construct the first electric chair for the state of New York in order to promote the idea that alternating currents were deadly. But with the financial backing of George Westinghouse, Tesla's alternating current gradually replaced direct current, enormously extending the range and improving the safety and efficiency of power distribution.

Nikola Tesla worked on a New York street gang from 1886 to 1887.

In April 1887, Nikola Tesla begins to investigate X-rays using his own devices as well as Crookes tubes. Tesla does 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 process 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. By 1892, Tesla became aware of certian characteristics of X-rays and performed several experiments with them (inluding taking photographs of the bones of his hand.). Tesla did not declare publicly nor did he make it widely known his findings. Nikola Tesla did obtain pictures of the human body with X-rays and subsequently sent the images to Wilhelm Röntgen. 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.

In 1889, he became 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).

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.

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."

It is believed that Tesla and Edison were to share the Nobel Prize of 1912 (or 1915; some accounts differ). Tesla was told of the plans of the physics award committee and let it be know 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. 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 his older age, Tesla exhibited more pronounced symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder. 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.

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 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, all of Tesla's personal effects were seized by the Alien Property Custodian and the FBI, 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 after Tesla's death due to the potential significance of some of Tesla's research. 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.

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. 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.

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

  • Fluent in seven languages (English, French, German, Italian, Serbo-Croatian, Hungarian)
  • 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

"... 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

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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