Nikola Tesla
Nikola Tesla (/ˈtɛslə/; Serbian Cyrillic: Никола Тесла,[2] [nǐkola têsla];[a] 10 July [O.S. 28 June] 1856 – 7 January 1943) was a Serbian-American[5][6] inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, and futurist. He is known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system.[7]
For other uses, see Nikola Tesla (disambiguation).
Nikola Tesla
10 July 1856
7 January 1943 (aged 86)
Nikola Tesla Museum, Belgrade, Serbia
44°48′18″N 20°28′15″E / 44.8051°N 20.4707°E
- Austria (1856–1891)
- United States (1891–1943)
Graz University of Technology (dropped out)
- Inventor
- engineer
- futurist
Electrical and mechanical
- Alternating current
- high-voltage, high-frequency power experiments
- AC motor
- Carbon button lamp
- Induction motor
- Plasma globe
- Plasma lamp
- Polyphase system
- Radio control
- Resonant inductive coupling
- Rotating magnetic field
- Teleforce
- Telegeodynamics
- Teleoperation
- Tesla coil
- Tesla Experimental Station
- Tesla's oscillator
- Tesla turbine
- Tesla valve
- Torpedo[1]
- Vacuum variable capacitor
- Violet ray
- VTOL
- Wardenclyffe Tower
- Wireless power transfer
- World Wireless System
- Order of St. Sava, II Class, Government of Serbia (1892)
- Elliott Cresson Medal (1894)
- Order of Prince Danilo I (1895)
- Edison Medal (1916)
- Order of St. Sava, I Class, Government of Yugoslavia (1926)
- Order of the Yugoslav Crown (1931)
- John Scott Medal (1934)
- Order of the White Eagle, I Class, Government of Yugoslavia (1936)
- Order of the White Lion, I Class, Government of Czechoslovakia (1937)
- University of Paris Medal (1937)
- The Medal of the University St Clement of Ochrida, Sofia, Bulgaria (1939)
Born and raised in the Austrian Empire, Tesla first studied engineering and physics in the 1870s without receiving a degree. He then gained practical experience in the early 1880s working in telephony and at Continental Edison in the new electric power industry. In 1884 he emigrated to the United States, where he became a naturalized citizen. He worked for a short time at the Edison Machine Works in New York City before he struck out on his own. With the help of partners to finance and market his ideas, Tesla set up laboratories and companies in New York to develop a range of electrical and mechanical devices. His AC induction motor and related polyphase AC patents, licensed by Westinghouse Electric in 1888, earned him a considerable amount of money and became the cornerstone of the polyphase system which that company eventually marketed.
Attempting to develop inventions he could patent and market, Tesla conducted a range of experiments with mechanical oscillators/generators, electrical discharge tubes, and early X-ray imaging. He also built a wirelessly controlled boat, one of the first ever exhibited. Tesla became well known as an inventor and demonstrated his achievements to celebrities and wealthy patrons at his lab, and was noted for his showmanship at public lectures. Throughout the 1890s, Tesla pursued his ideas for wireless lighting and worldwide wireless electric power distribution in his high-voltage, high-frequency power experiments in New York and Colorado Springs. In 1893, he made pronouncements on the possibility of wireless communication with his devices. Tesla tried to put these ideas to practical use in his unfinished Wardenclyffe Tower project, an intercontinental wireless communication and power transmitter, but ran out of funding before he could complete it.
After Wardenclyffe, Tesla experimented with a series of inventions in the 1910s and 1920s with varying degrees of success. Having spent most of his money, Tesla lived in a series of New York hotels, leaving behind unpaid bills. He died in New York City in January 1943.[8] Tesla's work fell into relative obscurity following his death, until 1960, when the General Conference on Weights and Measures named the International System of Units (SI) measurement of magnetic flux density the tesla in his honor. There has been a resurgence in popular interest in Tesla since the 1990s.[9]
Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing
Soon after leaving the Edison company, Tesla was working on patenting an arc lighting system,[56] possibly the same one he had developed at Edison.[42] In March 1885, he met with patent attorney Lemuel W. Serrell, the same attorney used by Edison, to obtain help with submitting the patents.[56] Serrell introduced Tesla to two businessmen, Robert Lane and Benjamin Vail, who agreed to finance an arc lighting manufacturing and utility company in Tesla's name, the Tesla Electric Light and Manufacturing Company.[57] Tesla worked for the rest of the year obtaining the patents that included an improved DC generator, the first patents issued to Tesla in the US, and building and installing the system in Rahway, New Jersey.[58] Tesla's new system gained notice in the technical press, which commented on its advanced features.
The investors showed little interest in Tesla's ideas for new types of alternating current motors and electrical transmission equipment. After the utility was up and running in 1886, they decided that the manufacturing side of the business was too competitive and opted to simply run an electric utility.[59] They formed a new utility company, abandoning Tesla's company and leaving the inventor penniless.[59] Tesla even lost control of the patents he had generated, since he had assigned them to the company in exchange for stock.[59] He had to work at various electrical repair jobs and as a ditch digger for $2 per day. Later in life Tesla recounted that part of 1886 as a time of hardship, writing "My high education in various branches of science, mechanics and literature seemed to me like a mockery".[59][e]
Views and beliefs
On experimental and theoretical physics
Tesla disagreed with the theory of atoms being composed of smaller subatomic particles, stating there was no such thing as an electron creating an electric charge. He believed that if electrons existed at all, they were some fourth state of matter or "sub-atom" that could exist only in an experimental vacuum and that they had nothing to do with electricity.[263][264] Tesla believed that atoms are immutable—they could not change state or be split in any way. He was a believer in the 19th-century concept of an all-pervasive ether that transmitted electrical energy.[265]
Tesla was generally antagonistic towards theories about the conversion of matter into energy.[266] He was also critical of Einstein's theory of relativity, saying:
Literary works
Tesla wrote a number of books and articles for magazines and journals.[277] Among his books are My Inventions: The Autobiography of Nikola Tesla, compiled and edited by Ben Johnston in 1983 from a series of 1919 magazine articles by Tesla which were republished in 1977; The Fantastic Inventions of Nikola Tesla (1993), compiled and edited by David Hatcher Childress; and The Tesla Papers.
Many of Tesla's writings are freely available online,[278] including the article "The Problem of Increasing Human Energy", published in The Century Magazine in 1900,[279] and the article "Experiments with Alternate Currents of High Potential and High Frequency", published in his book Inventions, Researches and Writings of Nikola Tesla.[280][281]
