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NIKOLA TESLA: A SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Nikola Tesla, who discovered the rotating magnetic field, which is the
basis of practically all alternating-current machinery, has been
called the genius who ushered in the power age.
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Nikola Tesla was born at precisely midnight between July 9/10, 1856,
in the village of Smiljan, province of Lika (Austria-Hungary, now
Croatia). His father, the Reverend Milutin Tesla, was a
Serbian-Orthodox priest; his mother, Djuka (Mandich), was unschooled
but highly intelligent. Both families came originally from western
Serbia and for generations had sent their sons to serve Church or Army
and their daughters to marry ministers or officers. A dreamer with a
poetic touch, as he matured, Tesla added to these earlier qualities
those of self-discipline and a desire for precision.
Training for an engineering career, he attended the Technical
University of Graz, Austria, and the University of Prague (1879-1880).
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. His first employment was in a
government telegraph engineering office in Budapest, where he made his
first invention, a telephone repeater. Later, 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 Strasbourg in 1883, he constructed, in after-work hours,
his first induction motor. Tesla sailed to America in 1884, arriving
in New York City 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 in New Jersey, 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.
After a difficult period, during which Tesla invented but lost his
rights to an arc-lighting system, he established his own laboratory in
New York City in 1887, where his inventive mind could be given free
rein. He experimented with shadowgraphs similar to those that later
were to be used by Wilhelm R?ntgen 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.
Tesla gave exhibitions in his laboratory in which he lighted lamps
without wires by allowing electricity to flow through his body, to
allay fears of alternating current. 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 for wireless
communication. That year also marked the date of Tesla's United States
citizenship.
Brilliant and eccentric, Tesla was then at the peak of his inventive
powers. He produced in rapid succession the induction motor (utilizing
his rotating magnetic field principle) and other electrical motors,
new forms of generators and tranformers, and a system of
alternating-current power transmission. Tesla also invented
fluorescent lights and a new type of steam turbine, and he became
increasingly intrigued with the wireless transmission of power.
A controversy between alternating-current and direct-current advocates
raged in 1880s and 1890s, featuring Tesla and Edison as leaders in the
rival camps. The advantages of the polyphase alternating-current
system, as developed by Tesla, soon became apparent, however,
particularly for long-distance power transmission. Westinghouse used
Tesla's system to light the World Columbian Exposition at Chicago in
1893. His success was a factor in winning him the contract to install
the first power machinery at Niagara Falls, which bore Tesla's name
and pattent 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, 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 would be as responsive as a
tuning fork to electrical vibrations of a certain pitch. He also
lighted 200 lamps without wires from a distance of 25 miles (40
kilometres) 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
U.S. 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 shifted to turbines and other projects. Because of a lack
of funds, his ideas remained in his notebooks, which are still
examined by engineers 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. An eccentric,
driven by compulsions and a progressive germ phobia, Tesla had a way
of intuitively sensing hidden scientific secrets and employing his
inventive talent to prove his hypotheses. He 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 to having invented a death ray
capable of destroying 10,000 airplanes, 250 miles (400 kilometres)
distant.
Tesla demanded much of his employees but inspired their loyalty.
Though he admired intellectual and beautiful women, he had no time to
become involved.
Tesla died in New York City on January 7, 1943, the holder of more
than 700 patents. 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, Belgrade, Yugoslavia. 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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Based on "The New Encyclopaedia Britannica", 15th edition, "The
McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of World Biography", and "Tesla: Man out of
time" by Margaret Cheney
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bogdan@neuronet.pitt.edu