Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla was an electrical inventor, and lived during the late 1800's into the mid-1900's. He was a brilliant person, yet was an enigma to practically everyone. Known for his eccentric lifestyle, Tesla nevertheless maintained a rather high social profile, despite his prolific inventiveness. Some of his phobias included pearl earrings worn by women, never staying in a hotel room or floor whose number was divisable by three, and insisting on a large number of napkins at every meal with which he would meticulously polish his silverware. Tesla had a good number of friends, one of which was Samuel Clemmons, also known as Mark Twain.

Tesla's main claim to fame lay with his invention of the alternating current motor. Tesla believed that alternating current was vastly superior to (Edison's) direct current, but the problem was the lack of a practical motor. Alternating current is practical because of the fact that it can be altered or converted to suit a variety of situations. For example, if the voltage is made quite high, then the current necessary for a specific level of power is very low. This low current then becomes very efficient when sending electrical power over very long wires. (This is the reason why the power lines running across the countryside are at very high voltages.)

He sailed to America in 1884, arriving with four cents in his pocket. He found immediate employment with Thomas Edison - who quickly became a rival - Edison being an advocate of the inferior DC power transmission system. For the remainder of his life, Tesla would have, at times, difficulty getting his ideas and inventions funded because most financiers were in Edison’s corner. Even later in his life, many of his ideas and inventions could not get funding, and so remained in notebooks, which are still examined to this day, by engineers searching for clues from his brilliant scientific mind. Edison and Tesla parted company within a year due to a false promise made by Edison.

The story went like this; Tesla was told (by Edison) that if he could repair all of the faulty and broken down motors and generators in the Edison plant that he would receive $50,000.00 for his effort. This Tesla did, and in record time, no less. At the completion of the repair work, Tesla approached Edison for the monies that were promised, at which time Edison replied that he was only "joking" about the money. Tesla described the nature of the benefits from his proposed modifications, and reminded Edison that he had worked nearly a year to redesign them and that in doing so, gave the Edison company several enormously profitable new patents in the process. When Tesla inquired again about the $50,000, Edison replied to him, "Tesla, you don't understand our American humor," and reneged on his promise. Edison reportedly offered to raise Tesla's salary by $10 per week as a compromise - at which rate it would have taken almost 100 years to earn the money Edison had originally promised. Tesla resigned on the spot. Tesla did not find it very amusing and left his employ for good.

Perhaps the lowest point in his life was in 1884-85 after he left Edison, and without recognition or a mentor, had to take manual labor to survive. He was digging ditches at $2.00 a day when he met Mr. A. K. Brown of the Western Union Telegraph Company who put up some of his own money and interested a friend in joining him in Tesla's project.

George Westinghouse realized that Tesla's system of AC power distribution was superior and hired Tesla to harness Niagara Falls for hydropower. Edison tried mightily to convince the public that AC was dangerous, going so far as to arrange public demonstrations where he electrocuted dogs with AC. He referred to these demonstrations as "we're going to Tesla this dog." This is a part of what became known as the "war of the currents."  Tesla's system of power distribution is now the industry standard and is uniformly used throughout the world. If Edison had had his way, we'd have a power plant every mile or so, because DC doesn't travel well over distance due to its inherent inefficiency.

Tesla and Edison have often been represented as rivals. They were rivals, to a certain extent, in the battle between the alternating and direct current in which Tesla championed the former. He won; the great power plants at Niagara Falls and elsewhere are founded on the Tesla system. Otherwise the two men were merely opposites. Edison had a genius for practical inventions immediately applicable. Tesla, whose inventions were far ahead of the time, aroused antagonisms which delayed the fruition of his ideas for years. However, great physicists like Kelvin and Crookes spoke of his inventions as marvelous. "Tesla," said Professor A. E. Kennelly, of Harvard University, when the Edison medal was presented to the inventor, "set wheels going round all over the world. . . . What he showed was a revelation to science and art unto all time."

Tesla also worked with radio-frequency electromagnetic waves, and despite the claims made by Marconi, actually did invent the idea of Radio as we know it today. (There are numerous patents which bear this out.) In working with radio waves, Tesla created the Tesla coil as a means to generate and receive this form of energy.

Tesla went on to experiment with actual wireless transmission of electrical power. In Colorado Springs, Colorado, he built a laboratory to develop this. The Colorado Springs lab contained the largest Tesla Coil ever built, even today. Called the 'Magnifying Transmitter', it was capable of generating some 300,000 watts of power, and (reportedly) could produce a bolt of lightning 130 feet long. According to local acounts, Tesla actually managed to successfully transmit about 30 to 50 thousand watts of power without wires using the 'Transmitter'.

Tesla was also a great mechanical engineer, and patented dozens of devices ranging from speedometers to extremely efficient electrical generators. One unique device was his bladeless turbine. Instead of using fan-type blades, Tesla's turbine utilized solid disks of metal, and relied on what is called the 'boundry-layer effect'. His turbine ran on either compressed air or steam, and was so efficient that a device held in the hand could produce well over 10 horsepower! Today, this bladeless technology is being used in a special type of non-clogging pump designed for the oil industry. (In fact, the thicker the stuff it pumps, the more efficiently it pumps it!)

Tesla had a knack for visualizing inventions in their final, finished form. He also would envision a great many other ideas and concepts, which only later in this century would come to pass. One such idea was the creation of a large ring that would encircle the earth. Built on scaffolding, once completed, the scaffolding would be removed, and the ring would remain stationary. 20th century geosynchronous satellites work in a similar way.

Tesla was also responsible for a great many other inventions and devices that we take for granted today. He postulated the ability to locate objects in the air or in the ground by using radio waves. Today, we call it RADAR, and when used to peer into the human body, MRI. Tesla also created radio- control devices. His work with special gas-filled lamps set the stage for the creation of fluorescent lighting.

Tesla eventually died, literally pennyless, on January 7th, 1943. It is rather sad that a man who gave the world so much, received so little for his efforts. History books have been unkind as well. Even today, many texts still credit Marconi with the invention of radio, despite the Supreme Court decision which overruled the Marconi patent, awarding it to Tesla. In many parts of this country, people still refer to the electric utility as the 'Edison Company', even though they use the Tesla-Westinghouse alternating current system, NOT Edison's direct current. At the Niagra Falls power generating station, a small statue of Tesla is purposely left unilluminated at night. It has been said that Tesla is the Forgotten Father of Technology. Tesla himself once commented "... The present is theirs. (skeptics of the day) The future, for which I really worked, is mine." How true indeed.