NIKOLA
TESLA
By
Naseer Ahmad, E & C, 2nd Semester
Nikola
Tesla, (born July 9/10, 1856, Smiljan, Austrian Empire [now in Croatia]—died
January 7, 1943, New York, New York, 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 immigrated 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.
ENGINEERING CAREER:
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 Strasbourg in 1883, he
constructed, 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
1888 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.
LABORATORY INVENTION(S):
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 Rontgen 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.
FIRST POWER MACHINERY AT NIAGARA FALLS:
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 Tele automatic 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,
Colorado, 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 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 40 km (25 miles) and created man-made lightning, producing
flashes measuring 41 meters (135 feet). 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, labor troubles, and Morgan’s withdrawal of
support.
TURBINES AND OTHER PROJECTS:
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 honor 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. He
faced lot of criticism about 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 400 km (250 miles).
After
Tesla’s death the custodian of alien property impounded his trunks, which held
his papers, his diplomas and other honors, 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.
