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| Nikola
Tesla |
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Tesla, Nikola (b. July 9/10, 1856, Smiljan,
Croatia--d. Jan. 7, 1943, New York City), Serbian-American inventor
and researcher who discovered the rotating magnetic field, the
basis of most alternating-current machinery. 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 the following year. 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. 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 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. 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. That
year also marked the date of Tesla's United States citizenship.
Westinghouse used Tesla's system to light the World's 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 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 would be as responsive as a tuning fork to electrical
vibrations of a certain frequency. 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 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 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 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 kilometres). 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." (I.W.H.) BIBLIOGRAPHY. Inez Hunt and Wanetta
W. Draper, Lightning in His Hand: The Life Story of Nikola Tesla
(1964), is a complete, authoritative, nontechnical biography.
Nikola Tesla Museum, Nikola Tesla 1856-1943: Lectures, Patents,
Articles (1956), contains authentic reprints, diagrams, lectures,
and considerable detailed information. Nikola Tesla, Experiments
with Alternate Currents of High Potential and High Frequency (1904),
furnishes Tesla's own story of his Colorado experiments.
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