Nikola Tesla is known as one of the worlds most important and influential scientist with a degree in electrical and mechanical engineering. He is born exactly on midnight 9th/10th of July 1856. Few of the most important things he discovered are AC current, radio, fluorescent lighting, robotics, wireless control, and stationary waves, there are also lot of his inventions that are attributed to other people. He is a Serb from Smiljan, a small village in Croatia, and as Tesla said he was always proud of his Serbian origins, and the Croatian country. Nikola Tesla had a knowledge of six languages by the age of 18, he had amazing photographic memory, and remarkable ability to visualize his ideas. His father Milutin was a orthodox priest, and his mother Georgina although uneducated was a very intelligent woman. According to Tesla, his family’s last name was changed from Draganic to Tesla. One of the assumptions is that they got their last name from a Roman village called Tesleum, the other assumption is that one branch of his family got nickname Tesla because hereditary trait, a teeth that looked like a tool used for work on wood called “tesla”.
The famous inventor went to German middle school in Smiljan, but he finished it in the nearby city called Gospic. After that he went to the high school in Rakovac close to city of Karlovac. His free time he liked to spend with his friends, reading, or capturing birds. In his teenage years he liked to play cards for money, but he always gave his earned cash to others . After finishing high school, he took a two year break before he continued with his education. His parents pressured him to be a priest, but he refused and signed up for engineering in city of Graz in Austria. Later on he went to Prague to study technique. When he finished with school, he got a job in a phone company, where he went door to door installing telephones. At one time he worked as an engineer for a phone company in Budapest. After Budapest he got hired in Continental Edison Company in Paris. On his field work in Strasbourg in 1883, he constructed his first induction motor after work hours. A year later in 1884 he migrates to United States to become a US citizen.
He arrives to New York with only four cents in his pocket, few of his own songs, couple of drawings and calculations for a flying machine, and a recommendation from a Edison’s associate which said ” Mr. Edison, I know two great men, one is you, the other one is standing right in front of you”. With this kind of recommendation he got hired immediately. Soon after Thomas Edison realizes that Nikola Tesla could be a fierce competition. A constant disagreement in their way of work made conflict between them two inevitable.
In May 1885 George Westinghouse, the main man in Westinghouse Electric buys Tesla’s patent for multiphase alternately driven dynamos, transformers and motors. That led to the conflict between Edison’s direct system DC, and Tesla’s alternating current AC approach which was much better. Soon after Tesla made his own laboratory in New York in 1887, where he works until his death. At that time he invented electromagnetic motor which will be the base for all the machines run by alternating current. He also worked on other inventions like high frequency electricity, carbon button lamp and he does experiments similar to Wilhelm Rontgen with x-rays. Beside that Tesla also works on different varieties of light. In 1891 he comes out with a new induction thread that has a common use in the radio technologies. Few years later in 1896 he is a leader of Niagara Falls power plant project. Along with that he works on a new projects as wireless transmission of electricity, radio controlled airplanes, radar, use of solar energy, radio communication with other planets… In Colorado Springs where he lives from 1899 to 1900, he stumbles upon his biggest discovery a stationary waves. This discovery helped him realize that earth can react to electric vibrations on a specific frequency. He used this knowledge to lit 200 light bulbs on a distance of 40 kilometers.
In 1900 he came back to New York with a capital from J. P. Morgan in the amount of 150, 000 $, and he begins the construction of tower which would wirelessly transmit radio signals. Tesla secured this money by giving 51% of the ownership to the J. P. Morgan. Tesla wanted to use this tower to send pictures, messages, weather reports… He basically envisioned television and internet long before it’s time. This project was abandoned because of the financial panic, problems with a workforce, and Morgans giving up on the project because the other inventor completed over ocean radio transmission. Ironically supreme court later concluded that this other inventor used Tesla’s patent for the radio transmission. Tesla than promised Morgan that he could use the tower to exploit ionosphere for free electricity, which means free electricity for everybody. Morgan wasn’t interested because there was no money to be made. Military took the tower apart during the war because they thought that it was used for spying. This was one of the Tesla’s biggest defeats. After destruction of tower he retreats to his laboratory to do far more complex experiments. Tesla also receives an Edison’s award in 1917, which is American’s Institute of Electro engineering highest award.
In July of 1934 NY Times reports that Nikola Tesla developed death ray particle weapon, whose basic concept is particle shoot at big velocity. He claimed that 12 of his strategically placed towers could protect whole US. He made exploitation of this weapon impossible because he separated plans in segments and he gave them to few governments, English, Canadian, American and Russian, so if they wanted to create a deadly beam they would have to sit together to develop the weapon. He realized that people weren’t responsible enough for this kind of power. Russians developed some kind of beam weapon by 1968, while Americans made a team of their best scientists and gave them the budget of 60 million dollars, they failed after six years. Tesla’s patents and ideas are used now a century later for both offensive and defensive purposes. Many of his inventions were rejected than later adopted by military. Tesla also developed HAARP technologies, but he kept it undercover in fear of falling into wrong hands. HAARP exist now thanks to Tesla’s theories that he could stimulate earths magnetic field, and create a shield around any city. HAARP is an experiment in which large array of antennas send series of waveforms into ionosphere. HAARP designer made it as a shield from a multiple enemy bomb attack, frying their circuitry. He also claims that heating up the portion of upper atmosphere could change the weather patterns, same thing Tesla was ridiculed 100 years earlier. Tesla was so advanced in his thinking and in his work that only few of his colleagues understood him. He had few friend some of them are Mark Twain, Robert Underwood Johnson and Francis Marion Crawford. Tesla always claimed for himself that he is not an inventor but rather discoverer of things that already exist around us. For his success he said that he can be thankful to his remarkable ability to visualize things, processes and events. He had this ability since he was little and sometimes he had trouble separating his imagination from reality. Other scientists thought of him as a loner and eccentric. Because of his eccentricity other people didn’t take him seriously. Even though he needed money, he refused to accept Nobel Prize for physics because as he claimed Thomas Edison his co-recipient wasn’t a real scientist. Despite all that he was a brilliant scientist that was able to prove his ideas. His speculations about communicating with other planets, his statement that he could split earth in half like an apple and that he created a death ray that could destroy 10000 airplanes on a distance of 400 kilometers came upon laughs and critics from all sides. Still Tesla is considered as one of the most important people in electrical engineering. His inventions based on alternating current became the base of the further developments in that field. Tesla developed around 1000 inventions and patents some of them are: three phase system for transmission of electricity, generator for high frequency currents, system for wireless control, new lighting system, he made high frequency alternators as a base for radio stations and a radar system.
Last years of his life he spent feeding pigeons. He lived poorly from his yearly income in a New Yorker hotel. Nikola Tesla died 7th January 1943. He is an example of a great man who changed this world drastically with his discoveries, and still he gets no reward for his accomplishments.
Author Slaven Patkovic