Nikola Tesla

Nicola Tesla was born  at the stroke of midnight during a lightning storm in Smijlan near Gospic in the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, July 9-10, 1856. An anecdote found in his short  autobiography relates that the midwife commented to his mother that he wold be a child of teh storm. his mother, a devout and inventive Orthodox, replied, "no, of the light."  Both came true. Nikola Tesla became the greatest genius of electricity and held more than 700 patents  within electrical and mechanical engineering  when he died on January 8, 1943 in New York, heavily in debt.

As a child, he was loathe to take note and sketch, as he preferred to work out complex problems in his head. his ability for visualization was such that he found  sketchng and taking notes an impediment to his logical process and therefore rsorted to them only when he had things well-developed. This leaves the world at an incredible loss because most of his genius is not documented except in letters and sketchbooks where he speaks of projects that he is working on, but the actual documentation  doesn't exist.

Like other great geniuses, Scriabin and van Gogh, he experienced synaesthsia, which probably added complications to his life as people  regarded him as an brilliant lunatic or a lunatic genius. Moreover he was fascinated with numbers and in later life suffered from obsessive-compulsive behavior patterns which further isolated him from the skeptical and critical society at the time.

But the majority of feats of genius that he executed, the majority were  ignored or simply not understood because even today, the world is trying to grasp the extent of his technological mastery. He, not Marconi, invented the radio.

"on  December 12, 1901, Marconi for the first time transmitted and received signals across the Atlantic Ocean.

Otis Pond, an engineer then working for Tesla, said, "Looks as if Marconi got the jump on you." Tesla replied, "Marconi is a good fellow. Let him continue. He is using seventeen of my patents."

PBS: Tesla-Who Invented Radio
http://www.pbs.org/tesla/ll/ll_whoradio.html

But by 1900, Tesla had envisioned and begun implementation for creating a global netweork for radio and electric transmission that would use the electromagnetic conducitivity of the earth for transmission.  He gained $150,000 grant from J P Morgan to build a radio city in New York with these 12points:

"1) The inter-connection of existing telegraph exchanges or offices all over the

world;

2) The establishment of a secret and non-interferable government telegraph service;

3) The inter-connection of all present telephone exchanges or offices around the

Globe;

4) The universal distribution of general news by telegraph or telephone, in

conjunction with the Press;

5) The establishment of such a "World System" of intelligence transmission for

exclusive private use;

6) The inter-connection and operation of all stock tickers of the world;

7) The establishment of a World system — of musical distribution, etc.;

8) The universal registration of time by cheap clocks indicating the hour with

astronomical precision and requiring no attention whatever;

9) The world transmission of typed or hand-written characters, letters, checks, etc.;

10) The establishment of a universal marine service enabling the navigators of all

ships to steer perfectly without compass, to determine the exact location, hour and

speak; to prevent collisions and disasters, etc.;

11) The inauguration of a system of world printing on land and sea;

12) The world reproduction of photographic pictures and all kinds of drawings or

records..."

The Strange Life of Nikola Tesla by Nikola Tesla, p35-36
http://tinyurl.com/zmk4d

The  project was destroyed not by any incompetence by Tesla, but the greed of J P Morgan when he realized that Tesla intended to create a system that could not be financially manipulated by him or further increase his wealth. Morgan withdrew his funding and systematically stonewalled and blackballed Tesla so that he ws unable to gain any investors elsewhere.

The  antagonism between Tesla and Morgan probably was long-standing as Morgan had been the primary supporter of Edison in the Battle of the Currents between Tesla-Westinghouse and Edison. Tesla won, with the  contract awarded for the electrification and lighting of the Chicago International Exhibition of 1893. Edison retaliated by refusing to allow any of his light bulbs be used, thinking it would force a black-out. however, Tesla, brilliantly went around the problem by lighting the exhibit with arch lighting using single node tubes instead. With a flick of the switch he lighted the  entire fairgrounds with hundreds of thousands  of incandescent lights, proving the superiority of AC current over DC.  Moreover, Tesla demonstrated wireless lighting in an age that accredited him of wizardry and mind-power, by  lighting 200 lamps without wires from a distance of 25 miles by using the telluric magnetivity of the earth.

Tesla was also the engineer who created the Niagra Falls hydro-electric plant and revolutionized the world by harnassing the power of water. He never gained financially from his numerous patents or inventions as it seemed that life robbed him of his rewards and recognition. He relates an anecdote as a child that he was playing with other kids one day when a man approached the group with some money. The other kids received some small coins, but when the man looked at Tesla's face, he proferred Tesla an empty hand and told him that his eyes were too intelligent.

Tesla studied and earned several degrees in at the Polytechnical University in Graz, including Electrical and Mechanical Engineering. Graz was also  Kepler's University and had an outstanding reputation at the time. He left Graz to come to Prague where he studied at the Charles-Ferdinand Branch which is now the Technical University. At the time, Ernst Mach was a professor at the institute. 

Concerned about the realities of financial support, he left the  university without completing his studies to become an engineer in Budapest with the American Telegraph Company. He became the lead engineer to install the telephone lines of the city and while there created a telephone repeater or amplifier which may have been the first loudspeaker. His employer, Mr Puskas in Budapest,  sent a recommendation to Charles Batchellor to Edison Con in Paris. Tesla packed his bags and moved to Paris.

In Paris, Tesla was given many complex problems, but one that brought him recognition was the repair of the Strassbourg  Railway Station.  On the grand day of its opening, with a cuircuit blew out the wall of the station with the Kaiser Wilhelm in attendance. Tesla was promised reward of 25,000USD for its repair which he never received. The pattern was to recurr over again in his life, but most bitterly in his experience with Edison who exploited his genius, filed his pattents and also received the benefit from them.

Impressed with his work, Charles Batchellor wrote a recommendation to Edison who was a close friend. The conflict was to  develop from the first day of work to several years as Tesla was clearly Edison's superior in electomagnetics and engineering, but an unknown youth in America.  Enroute to the US, Tesla sailed in a ship whch had a faulty engine that he repaired.

When he landed in New York in 1884, he crossed two men cursing a car with a faulty engine on Broadway. He repaired it on the spot and was handed 20 USD for his time. Edison, though, wanted Tesla to make improvements in his DC power generators. Tesla did so very quickly and efficiently with Edison offering him a 50,000 reward for solving the problems. When Tesla went to claim his rightful reward, Edison told him, "You don't understand American humor." Tesla walked out and spent two years working as a common laborer in the streets to survive until  George Westinghouse began collaboration with him and they established the new Tesla company with the purpose of exploring and utilizing AC power rather than DC which Tesla viewed as  excessively dangerous. Tesla also advocated teh use of earth's magnetic properties for the relay of electircal transmissions rather than raised powerlines. This would not be advantageous to the rich power barons at the time. However, Europe followed Tesla's advice and most powerlines are underground.

In November 1895, Tesla published in the Electrical Review 30 the harmful effects of x-rays, which later would be known  as Roentgens. He was creating shadow pictures by photographing the bones in his hands and noting the painful skin damage of his assistants, but  rather than attribute them to the effects of radiation, he blamed them on ozone. Later Roentgen, not Telsa, would be recognized for the pioneering of the medical applications of electromagnetic fields and x-ray photography which bears his name.

After his laboratory was destroyed in a fire, Tesla packed house and moved to Colarado Springs, Colorado to study the attibutes of lightning and electricity. He reasoned that with the high altitude he would have have greater access to natural forces which he could harness to work for him. There he built a special laboratory which was insulated on the inside with copper sheeting and had a roll-back roof to allow the sparks to release. He built his superlarge Tesla coil there and on his first experiment with high voltage electricity, knocked out the power plant in El Paso and  left the city without electricity until he was forced to repair the damage. Ever aware of public safety, Tesla posted a sign around his lab to warn against trespassing: Keep Out-Great Danger".

Tesla at PBS
http://www.pbs.org/tesla/ll/index.html

In Colorado Springs, he was interested in experimentation of high-voltage electricity but told the journalists that he ws there to send wireless radio from Pike's Peak to Paris. Although there is no record, it is also not unlikely that he achieved it. During the time he was in Colorado Springs, he wrote more than 500pages of notes with 200 accompanying diagrams. He also announced that he had eceived transmissions from outer space, but the world ridiculed him. In 1996, his experiments and equipemnt were reduplicated and it was  proven that Tesla had  been the first person to hear signals from Jupiter although he was  convinced that they came from Mars. His technology was also used on the Voyager.

To demonstrate the practicality and applicability of radio wave technolgy, Tesla put on an exhibition in Madison Square Garden  in 1898, describing a  new field of technology which he named as  teleautonomy He put a small boat into a large tub and then sent it through several drills in front of an audience, making it turn right, left and  submerge. The audience credited it to "mind control" and could not grasp its application to international telegraphy or wireless communication. When he failed to gain the financial support necessary to save his Wardenclyffe Porhject, he tried to sell the newly invented robot to the US government with suggestions for its applications, he was turned down.  A few days after his death in New York, the US government through means of the FBI seized his archives and notebooks for fear of international  threats from the Soviet Union. Many of his papers disappeared, including those that detailed his invention of the "death beam". However, today, his inventions are seriously reconsidered and under constant investigation as well as application. A patent filed in 1928 and granted with the US Patent Office  was the design for VTOL  plane.  The approval for the plane came too late in life and Tesla had no means to financially realize it. In 1953, Rolls Royce created its first Flying Bedstead and in 1963, Neil Armstrong was nearly killed in an inciident with a malfunctional NASA Flying Bedstead that became the prototype of the Lunar Lander in the Apollo 11 Project. The most controversial of the military aircraft is the Osprey which is VTOL.  Use of unmannned aircraft were not utlilized until much later. Tesla beat them all, hands down but was ridiculed for it and died impoverished.

Tesla had been as fascinated with flying as he was with electricity and lightning. As a kid, he climbed a roof and decided to fly by use of an umbrella. His aspirations were quickly shattered when he landed on hard ground, but he decided that there had to be other ways to go about it. He experimented with other subjects: June Bugs. By using small bits of lightweight wood, and attaching a coil, he realized that he could harness the energetic power of insects wings, already recognizing the superiority of rotary engines. All went well with his miniature workshop  and flying contraptions until an Austrian kid took interest in his projects and ate the bugs. From then on, Tesla was repulsed.

The Strange Life of Nikola Tesla by Nikola Tesla, p17
http://tinyurl.com/zmk4d

 
Tesla apparently also conceived of what is now known as the scramjet engine that is used for the experimental X-45 project. He was so many light years ahead of his time that people shrugged him off as crazy and could not conceive when international communciation could be feasible or that people woul be able to send each other images  through wireless technology. Had  J P Morgan continued to fund the Wardenclyffe Project and the US government given him the recognition due to him, perhaps the  internet would have existed  ages ago, but today, scientists are still trying desperately to utilize his technology and unlock his secrets that were buried with him.