Ok Hypographites! I cut/pasted my paper on Nikola Tesla for those of you who have a few minutes on their hand. I wrote this about 2 years ago...
I know many of you voted for Nick as the greatest scientific mind... Enjoy, and add any more insights you might have!!
A brilliant man was born on a Croatian farm, in the small village of Smilijan, on July 9, 1856. His name was Nikola Tesla. Nikola’s parents were Serbian. His father was an Orthodox priest; his mother worked at home and had a knack for inventing tools for the farm. But there was something very special about Nikola.
He was a dreamer with a unique mental ability. In flashes, he could visualize inventions within his mind with complete detail. His first “invention” as a boy was a rotary engine. It was powered by insects he had glued to a paper wheel.
From an early age, Nikola showed a strong interest in mathematics, mechanics, and physics. Ever the romantic dreamer, young Tesla could speak four languages by the time he was 17 as well. It has been said by Tesla himself in his autobiography that at a young age he began seeing flashes of light that interfered with his physical vision; something that could only be described as “amazing”. Nikola at times had trouble distinguishing between a spoken object and the real because of his intense visualizations and flashes.
At nineteen he entered the Technical University in Graz, Austria and began training as an engineer. He took courses in physics and mathematics. From there, He went to the University of Prague and started taking philosophy. He condensed his studies by completing two years in one; by working 19 hours a day, sleeping only two, and suffering a complete nervous breakdown!
During his years of studies, his hearing and vision intensified beyond normal human capacity. He could sense like a bat. His senses were so heightened, the flashes of light so vivid, that just a word would become an intense image he could feel and taste. These flashes of brilliance intensified over time until he was about 25. During those periods of flashes, Nikola had some of his greatest and lasting ideas; including his alternating current induction motor.
When Tesla settled down to Earth a bit, he took a job as an electrical engineer for the Central Telegraph Office in Budapest. It was 1881, and the following year he moved on to Paris to employ himself for Continental Edison Company. After hours, Tesla constructed his first induction motor.
At this point, Tesla decided to move to America. He sailed off in 1884 with four cents in his pocket. Edison immediately snatched up his services.
This was an important time in Tesla’s life, as Edison differed quite sharply about how to provide electricity to Edison’s newly invented light bulb. This would unfortunately work against Nikola for the rest of his years because Edison had the money men in his corner.
Edison ripped off Tesla. Thomas made a false promise to Nikola by telling him that if he could repair all the broken and faulty motors and generators within the Edison plant that he would get $50,000. Well Tesla took on the challenge with gusto and fixed them all within record time.
Tesla came back to Edison for the money he had promised, but Edison reneged and insisted that he was merely joking at the time. Of course Tesla didn’t find it very funny or amusing and decided to ditch that gig.
Tesla was at a low point in his life. He got shammed by Edison and had to start digging ditches to pay the bills. He was shoveling dirt for $2 a day when he met a Mr. Brown of Western Union Telegraph. He was impressed by Tesla and threw in some money for some of Nikola’s projects and interested a friend. Brown’s friend was Westinghouse, and he commisioned the budding genius to design the AC generators for his Niagra-Falls project.
Tesla and Edison were agaain rivals as Edison tried to champion his direct current (DC) system while Westinghouse decided wisely by choosing Tesla’s alternating current (AC) system. The problem was Tesla and Edison were practically opposites when it came to theory and personality. Tesla was a strikingly handsome man; very neat and clean. He was a big idea person; it came in flashes of brilliance. Whereas Thomas Edison was much more methodical and practical.
Edison was also very adamant about the superiority of DC current and went great lengths trying to discredit and humiliate Tesla. He even went so far as to electrocute poor Topsy the elephant in a wretching public display-. By Edison’s propagandist tactics, he tried to persuade the public to buy his DC current. AC current eventually triumphed.
AC current has many advantages to it. Unlike DC current, AC can be stepped up or down by a transformer to a different voltage. DC requires a switch mode for converting voltage which is more expensive and less efficient. Tesla’s use of higher voltage made it more efficient to transmit the power. The efficiency increase is due to Ohm’s Law which states that electrical energy losses are dependent on the current flow in a conductor.
The power losses in the conductor are described by the formula :
P = I squared x R. That implies that if the current is doubled, the power loss will be four times greater. Therefor it becomes advantageous to transmit and convert the power into extremely high voltages ( sometimes up to hundreds of kilovolts ). But that could be dangerous ,and usually the power gets “stepped down” for practical uses.
So in May of 1885, George Westinghouse purchased the patents for Nikola’s induction motor, the poly-phase system of alternating-current dynamos, transformers, and other motors for a mere $60,000 ($5,000 in cash and 150 shares of stock). After Westinghouse won the contract to supply the Chicago World Fair of 1893 with electricity, Tesla’s reputation soared. Soon after, Westinghouse Electric and General Electric teamed forces to use Niagra-Falls for energy production, using Tesla technology.
As the market for electricity increased, the distance for which it had to travel increased. Tesla’s AC current was more efficient and adaptable.
Tesla was doing well and his eccentricities surfaced. He became accomplished and recognized. Many a woman with plans tried to lure the attractive Nikola into their salon; he was an inspiration for those who were around him. However, Nikola would remain unattainable and never marry.
He remained celibate and always preferred to dine alone. He became increasingly germ phobic and always requested a clean table cloth, avoided shaking hands, and washed his hands frequently. He always measured his food and weighed 142 pounds throughout his lifetime. Nikola was a fastidious dresser ; he wore new gloves weekly and a new tie daily. He always slept four hours per night. He became friends with Mark Twain and a few other social intellects of the time. He enjoyed poetry, the opera, and a glass of wine or beer. He was quiet, modest, and reclusive.
However, Tesla got the short end of the stick again. The electricity business took off and Wesringhouse was to pay Nikola $2.50 per kilowatt hour sold, which quickly added up to around $12 million! Well, George told Tesla that he was sorry he couldn’t pay him or otherwise he’d go broke.
Tesla, not being a very good business man, tore up the contract so people could benefit from cheap electricity. Tesla did make a million by the time he was forty, but gave up his royalties of extremely profitable inventions in a gesture of humanitarianism. His dream was to provide free, if not cheap, electricity to all people.
In April of 1887 he set out and set up his own laboratory. His mind worked out all kinds of inventions. In 1888 he found that a magnetic field could be made to rotate if a pair of coils at right angles were supplied with AC current, and the AC induction motor was born. He also experimented with shadowgraphs, which later led to the discovery of X-rays. Tesla’s mind cranked out many ideas, inventions, and patents in a whirlwind of pure brilliance and creativity.
Among his ideas and inventions were radio-frequency electromagnetic waves. Despite what history and Marconi said, Tesla invented the radio as we now know it. Unfortunately, he wasn’t given his proper respect until the U.S. Supreme Court finally overturned Marconi’s claims; but it wasn’t till Tesla had been dead.
Tesla also ‘sparked’ the invention of his Tesla coil as a way to generate and receive radio wave energy. When you start your car, the ignition produces a spark, and is a unit that is either wholly or partially a Tesla coil.
Tesla’s greatness was his phenomenal understanding of electricity; especially as it was in it’s infancy. He invented motors that run our everyday appliances, created fluorescent bulbs in his lab some 40 years before industry “discovered” them, and even a unique device that scientists today are beginning to see as remarkably efficient; the bladeless boundary disk turbine!
Another clash between Edison and Tesla loomed. It was World War I and the German submarines were wreaking havoc. The government put Edison in charge of finding a way to detect the subs. Again, Nikola’s advanced thinking proposed using energy waves- what we know today as ‘radar’. Good old Edison rejected Tesla’s claims as absurd and completely preposterous. 25 years passed before they found out Nikola was right.
Tesla’s deep desire to provide wireless electricity around the globe prompted him to build a laboratory in Colorado Springs. It contained the largest Tesla Coil ever built and he called it the ‘magnifying transmitter’.
The monstrosity could pump up some 300,000 watts of juice, and according to local accounts, Tesla managed to transmit some 30-50 thousand watts of it and create a bolt of lightening some 130 feet!
However, Tesla’s real problems were he was going broke, and he had to scrap the tower to pay off his debts.
Tesla’s major financier was the super wealthy J.P. Morgan. Again, Tesla would get the shaft because his theory would provide people with free electricity and Morgan would have no part in anything for free. Soon after words, Morgan pulled the carpet from under Tesla.
Tesla, despite his accomplishments, was now poor. By 1915, he was bouncing from one cheap motel to an other, living on credit. He was a victim of his own terrible business decisions. He didn’t have the money to get more of his ideas developed and he never could quite come up with something as profitable as his AC current system. From there he was exploited, his ideas used by others as their own, and thought mad from some of his postulating. ( like the idea of wireless transmission of voice, picture, and electricity)
Tesla had few friends but Mark Twain was one. He received birthday cards from Einstein an De Forest and a few others. However, Nikola withdrew from the world which criticized and exploited him. He would pass his time in the New York Public Library or he would be out feeding pigeons. He considered his pigeons “ my sincere friends “.
Eventually Tesla aged and his heart was giving out. He would have fainting spells and suffer from confusion. One day January 1, 1943, Nikola complained of chest pains during an experiment and retired to his hotel room. There he stayed until he died, they believe, on January 7, 1943.
Over 2,000 people attended his funeral. The world lost a bright and vigorous mind.
Some of Tesla’s early patents from 1903 suggest he may also be the father of the transistor; modern computer makers continually run into Nikola’s patents # 723,188 and #725,605. They contain the basic principles of logic AND circuit element basics! His brilliance knew no boundaries and he developed such ideas remote control, believed in harnessing solar and geothermal power, and invented the vacuum tube amplifier ( de Forest receiving the credit ). The list goes on and on.
Nikola Tesla was an original thinker and at the time his ideas were completely unprecedented. He was a renaissance man that went unrewarded throughout his lifetime. Today, scientists understand many of his innovative flashes and continues to scour his notes. Some notes are still being held secretly by the U.S. military (allegedly). Indeed we all owe Nikola Tesla a debt of gratitude for his selfless contribution to science and our communities. Without Tesla we might still be living in the dark.
“ The present is theirs; the future for which I really work, is mine”
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