I will declare the decree: the Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee.
Nikola Tesla Biography
(1856 - 1943)
(born July
9/10, 1856, Smiljan, Austria-Hungary [now in Croatia]—died Jan. 7,
1943, New York City, N.Y., U.S.) Serbian-American inventor and engineer
who discovered and patented the rotating magnetic field, the basis of
most alternating-current machinery. He also developed the three-phase
system of electric power transmission. He emigrated to the United
States in 1884 and sold the patent rights to his system of
alternating-current dynamos, transformers, and motors to George
Westinghouse. In 1891 he invented the Tesla coil, an induction coil
widely used in radio technology.Tesla was
from a family of Serbian origin. His father was an Orthodox priest; his
mother was unschooled but highly intelligent. As he matured, he
displayed remarkable imagination and creativity as well as a poetic
touch.Training for an engineering career, he
attended the Technical University at Graz, Austria, and the University
of Prague. At Graz he first saw the Gramme dynamo, which operated as a
generator and, when reversed, became an electric motor, and he
conceived a way to use alternating current to advantage. Later, at
Budapest, he visualized the principle of the rotating magnetic field
and developed plans for an induction motor that would become his first
step toward the successful utilization of alternating current. In 1882
Tesla went to work in Paris for the Continental Edison Company, and,
while on assignment to Strassburg in 1883, he constructed, in
after-work hours, his first induction motor. Tesla sailed for America
in 1884 arriving in New York with four cents in his pocket, a few of
his own poems, and calculations for a flying machine. He first found
employment with Thomas Edison, but the two inventors were far apart in
background and methods, and their separation was inevitable.In
May 1885, George Westinghouse, head of the Westinghouse Electric
Company in Pittsburgh, bought the patent rights to Tesla's polyphase
system of alternating-current dynamos, transformers, and motors. The
transaction precipitated a titanic power struggle between Edison's
direct-current systems and the Tesla–Westinghouse alternating-current
approach, which eventually won out.Tesla soon
established his own laboratory, where his inventive mind could be given
free rein. He experimented with shadowgraphs similar to those that
later were to be used by Wilhelm Röntgen when he discovered X-rays in
1895. Tesla's countless experiments included work on a carbon button
lamp, on the power of electrical resonance, and on various types of
lighting.In order to allay fears of alternating
currents, Tesla gave exhibitions in his laboratory in which he lit
lamps by allowing electricity to flow through his body. He was often
invited to lecture at home and abroad. The Tesla coil, which he
invented in 1891, is widely used today in radio and television sets and
other electronic equipment. That year also marked the date of Tesla's
U.S. citizenship.Westinghouse used Tesla's alternating current
system to light the World's Columbian Exposition at Chicago in 1893.
This success was a factor in their winning the contract to install the
first power machinery at Niagara Falls, which bore Tesla's name and
patent numbers. The project carried power to Buffalo by 1896.In
1898 Tesla announced his invention of a teleautomatic boat guided by
remote control. When skepticism was voiced, Tesla proved his claims for
it before a crowd in Madison Square Garden.In
Colorado Springs, Colo., where he stayed from May 1899 until early
1900, Tesla made what he regarded as his most important
discovery—terrestrial stationary waves. By this discovery he proved
that the Earth could be used as a conductor and made to resonate at a
certain electrical frequency. He also lit 200 lamps without wires from
a distance of 25 miles (40 km) and created man-made lightning,
producing flashes measuring 135 feet (41 metres). At one time he was
certain he had received signals from another planet in his Colorado
laboratory, a claim that was met with derision in some scientific
journals.Returning to New York in 1900, Tesla
began construction on Long Island of a wireless world broadcasting
tower, with $150,000 capital from the American financier J. Pierpont
Morgan. Tesla claimed he secured the loan by assigning 51 percent of
his patent rights of telephony and telegraphy to Morgan. He expected to
provide worldwide communication and to furnish facilities for sending
pictures, messages, weather warnings, and stock reports. The project
was abandoned because of a financial panic, labour troubles, and
Morgan's withdrawal of support. It was Tesla's greatest defeat.Tesla's
work then shifted to turbines and other projects. Because of a lack of
funds, his ideas remained in his notebooks, which are still examined by
enthusiasts for unexploited clues. In 1915 he was severely disappointed
when a report that he and Edison were to share the Nobel Prize proved
erroneous. Tesla was the recipient of the Edison Medal in 1917, the
highest honour that the American Institute of Electrical Engineers
could bestow.Tesla allowed himself only a few
close friends. Among them were the writers Robert Underwood Johnson,
Mark Twain, and Francis Marion Crawford. He was quite impractical in
financial matters and an eccentric, driven by compulsions and a
progressive germ phobia. But he had a way of intuitively sensing hidden
scientific secrets and employing his inventive talent to prove his
hypotheses. Tesla was a godsend to reporters who sought sensational
copy but a problem to editors who were uncertain how seriously his
futuristic prophecies should be regarded. Caustic criticism greeted his
speculations concerning communication with other planets, his
assertions that he could split the Earth like an apple, and his claim
of having invented a death ray capable of destroying 10,000 airplanes
at a distance of 250 miles (400 km).After
Tesla's death the custodian of alien property impounded his trunks,
which held his papers, his diplomas and other honours, his letters, and
his laboratory notes. These were eventually inherited by Tesla's
nephew, Sava Kosanovich, and later housed in the Nikola Tesla Museum in
Belgrade. Hundreds filed into New York City's Cathedral of St. John the
Divine for his funeral services, and a flood of messages acknowledged
the loss of a great genius. Three Nobel Prize recipients addressed
their tribute to “one of the outstanding intellects of the world who
paved the way for many of the technological developments of modern
times.”
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