Dr. Nikola Tesla[ Master Site Index

Dr. Nikola Tesla
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"Were we," remarks B. A. Behrend, distinguished author and engineer, "to seize and to
eliminate the results of Mr. Tesla's work, the wheels of industry would cease to turn, our
electric cars and trains would stop, our towns would be dark, and our mills would be
dead and idle."
Nikola Tesla: A Brief Bio: (1856-1943) - Nikola Tesla was born in Croatia,
which at that time, lay within Austro-Hungary. It is interesting to note that he was a
Serbian of Valachian descent. Tesla was proud of his Croatian motherland and
Serbian descent. When his mother died in 1892, he paid a visit to Croatian capital
Zagreb, and gave a lecture about alternating current. On that occasion Tesla said:
"As a son of my homeland, I feel it is my duty to help the city of Zagreb in
every respect with my advice and work" - ("Smatram svojom duznoscu da
kao rodeni sin svoje zemlje pomognem gradu Zagrebu u svakom pogledu
savjetom i cinom"). Nikola Tesla, besides being a great inventor and an
outspoken Serbian patriot, had sincerely adored free Serb states, Serbia and
Montenegro. He had never hidden his patriotic feelings, on the contrary, he stressed them.
On 1st of June 1892, Tesla arrived in Belgrade due to the call from Belgrade municipality. Several
thousand people greeted him at the Belgrade train station. He addressed the gathered crowd, who
saluted him: "There is something within me that might be illusion as it is often case with young
delighted people, but if I would be fortunate to achieve some of my ideals, it would be on the
behalf of the whole of humanity. If those hopes would become fulfilled, the most exiting
thought would be that it is a deed of a Serb. Long live Serbdom!..." Tesla further said to the
students of Belgrade University: "As you can see and hear, I have remained a Serb overseas
where I have done some researches. You should do so and by your knowledge and hard work
you should glorify Serbdom over the world." One of Tesla's proudest moments was when he was
granted his United States citizenship; he never lost his love of his homeland, however. His monument,
carved by Ivan Mestrovic (who knew Tesla personally), can be seen in Zagreb. Another monument,
carved by Croatian sculptor Frano Krsinic, can be seen on "Goat Island", near the former Tesla
Hydropower Plant on Niagara Falls, in the middle of the Niagara River, between the United States and
Canada boarders. It is purposely left un-illuminated at night (for the effect, and, to provoke thought of
what the world would be like without Tesla's contributions). A part of the Technical Museum in Zagreb
is dedicated to Nikola Tesla. Even today, so many years after Tesla's death in 1943, his numerous
manuscripts are kept as "top secret" by the US Ministry of Defense (see Margaret Cheney, "Tesla:
Man Out of Time", Prentice Hall, 1981)
Nikola Tesla, an American inventor and engineer, whose mastery of electricity came at a time
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when electricity was changing American life. Tesla is the unsung creator of the electric age, without
whom our radio, auto ignition, telephone, alternating current power generation, alternating current
transmission, radio, and television, would all have been impossible. He discovered the rotating
magnetic field, the basis of most alternating-current machinery, and held more than 700 patents. His
inventions make him one of the foremost pioneers in the distribution of electric energy.
Born into a family of Serbian origin, Tesla’s father was an Orthodox priest. He had several sisters and
one older brother, Dane, who died when Nikola was five. In his autobiography ("My Inventions"),
Tesla tells of the early workings of his mind in a description that we can only regard with amazement.
He began seeing flashes of light that interfered with his physical vision. When a word was spoken, he
would envision the object so clearly that he had trouble distinguishing between the imagined (spoken)
object and the real. In later years, he would build a machine in his mind, run it to see where it was
flawed, and make whatever repairs and adjustments were needed, before he ever began his
construction. At night and in solitude, Tesla had an inner world of personal vision where he made
journeys to distant places, studies, carried on conversations and met people that seemed as real to
him as his outer world. By the time he was a teenager he spoke four languages. At about age 17, he
found to his delight that he could create things in his mind, picturing them as the finished product
without models, drawings or experiments. He invented such things as a low friction finless waterwheel
and a motor driven by June bugs.
He trained to be an engineer, attending the Technical University at Graz, Austria and the University of
Prague. Beginning his studies in physics and mathematics at Graz Polytechnic, he then took
philosophy at the University of Prague. After finishing the studies at the Polytechnic Institute, doing two
years of study in one, working 19 hours a day and sleeping only two, he suffered a complete nervous
breakdown. During the malady, he observed many phenomena, both strange and unbelievable. His
vision and hearing intensified beyond any normal human capacity. He could sense objects in the dark
in the same way as a bat. It was a period in which his sensitivities were so heightened that the flashes
of light that he had seen from the time he was a youth now filled the air around him with tongues of
living flame. Their intensity, instead of diminishing, increased with time, and seemingly attained a
maximum when he was about twenty-five years old. His responses were so keenly tuned that a word
would become an image that he could feel see and taste. It was during this time that he had one of his
most famous ideas; the rotating magnetic field and alternating current induction motor.
Bringing himself back to the world as it is, Tesla began work as an electrical engineer with the Central
Telegraph Office in Budapest, Hungary in 1881 and the following year, he went to work in Paris for the
Continental Edison Company. In 1883 he constructed, after work hours, his first induction motor.
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. 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
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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 did not find it very "funny" and left
his employ.
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. Shortly thereafter, Tesla was commissioned with
the design of the AC generators installed at Niagara Falls.
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."
In May 1885, George Westinghouse purchased the patents to his induction motor, his polyphase
system of alternating-current dynamos, transformers and motors and made this the basis of the
Westinghouse power system which still underlies the modern electrical power industry today. When
Westinghouse found that they could not stay in business if they paid him his due of Twelve Million
Dollars, Tesla tore up the contract. Tesla did this, quite simply, so people could have the benefit of
financially attainable electricity. Tesla made his first million before he was 40, but gave up the royalties
on his most profitable invention as a humanitarian gesture.
In April 1887, he established his own laboratory, where he experimented with shadowgraphs similar to
those involved in the discovery of x-rays. In 1888 his discovery that a magnetic field could be made to
rotate if two coils at right angles are supplied with AC current 90 degrees out of
phase made possible the invention of the AC induction motor. The major advantage
of this motor being its brushless operation, which many at the time was believed
impossible.
By 1890, Tes