History, they say, is written by the winners. But this is little consolation for the women and men off the list. For many years, textbooks wrote that Thomas Edison gave us the benefits of light and electricity, while a genius whose innovative technologies that surprised and continue to amaze the world are closely sandwiched on the shelf of science between Edward Teller and Thales from Miletus (Thales of Miletus).
At the turn of the 20th century, electricity remained within the reach of scientific curiosity - one of those concepts that could hardly be imagined by anyone doing their day to day work at home. Nikola Tesla, perhaps more than anyone else, has turned this approach around, but his pioneering research on electricity is only part of the scientific and technical innovation that will make him a pantheon of scientific deities.
Tesla not only expanded and revolutionized the work of his predecessors, he also bypassed all of his contemporaries by several steps. But just as great music is not enough to become a rock idol, in science to become an idol it takes more than innovative breakthroughs and amazing machines. The figure must have intriguing aspects - qualities like eccentricity, visionaryism and a thirst to give himself all to science and his work. Nikola Tesla was just such a person.
He saw the potential
In an era when the dollar was king, when scientists and engineers built their business empires on a breakthrough or two, Tesla's focus never deviated from his work. He was prolific and at times poor.
While his rivals in the War of Currents - the struggle between Tesla and Edison's camps over electrical technology that will reign in this world - clung to their teeth and nails to secure an electrical monopoly, Tesla's desire to get funding for his next major project repeatedly defeated his interests in protecting their patents and inventions.
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Tesla's focus and foresight did just as much damage to its owner as it did to society. Unlike Edison, he didn’t work on public image, beat the press, and didn’t build a business empire. Generally speaking, his work went beyond the comprehension of many of his contemporaries. Accordingly, Tesla frequently applied for funding for his research. For example, the US Navy.
He dreamed of more
Like any world-changing inventor, Tesla was a forward-thinking man, and his career went most smoothly when he was able to communicate this vision to other pioneers. In 1893, his proposal to use alternating current instead of Edison's constant current won the competition for coverage of the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago (World Chicago Fair). This moment not only became a turning point in "War of Currents", it also allowed Tesla to realize his most ambitious ambitions, including his childhood dream of harnessing the energy of Niagara Falls.
Even after he won the Niagara contract, most of his supporters doubted that Tesla's hydropower plant would work. The inventor was sure of the opposite. When the switch was turned on at midnight on November 16, 1896, lights came on in Buffalo, 34 kilometers from New York. A couple of years later, the station expanded its influence to New York, which was 644 kilometers away. Tesla's childhood dream came true.
Tesla also suggested controlling, or at least catalyzing, the weather with electricity. He saw the possibility of transmitting world energy and information with it - the first glimpses of the world wireless communication system. The scientist told investor JP Morgan: "When the wireless network is fully spread across the Earth, it will become a huge brain, capable of receiving responses from every part of it."
Two words: death ray
Oh, I think we said death ray? We meant "a beam that can shoot down planes from the skies hundreds of kilometers away and give the infantry a very, very bad day."
Amid the gathering clouds of World War II, Tesla announced that he had conceived a new weapon - a "ray of peace" - that could end the war. He saw in his device, which we know today as a flow of charged particles, something like a "wall of China", an anti-war device that would protect national borders. But the newspapers got it all wrong. For example, the headline that appeared on the front page of The New York Times on July 11, 1934: “Tesla, at 78, conceived a new death ray.
The possibility that a world power was developing such a beam spilled over into the Cold War, especially after some of Tesla's papers disappeared after his death.
He had shifts
Good or bad, eccentricity is precisely the quality that, in our opinion, is inherent in geniuses, and Tesla did not disappoint us.
Some say that Tesla built his greatest inventions, including the induction motor, completely in his mind. Unlike Edison, who worked through trial and error, Tesla found that sometimes key decisions came to him during dazzling flashes of insight.
In his own words, Tesla suffered from visual and auditory hallucinations, and also had an increased sensitivity to vibration and strong light. He was also afraid of round objects like pearls worn by women and was obsessed with the number 3.
The inventor was also known for his progressive aversion to germs, and ultimately limited his diet to cooked foods. This phobia arose after scientific colleagues showed a scientist raw water under a microscope. In his declining years, the aging scientist kept pigeons in his hotel room, but dressed as decently as always - which confused anyone who tried to determine his true mental state.
Tesla's features, it is worth noting, did not affect his socialization; reporters and friends described him as charming, humble and pleasant.
He left a scientific unit
Besides the fact that Tesla was named in his honor, Tesla, like Karl Friedrich Gauss, left his name for the name of the unit of magnetic flux density in the International System of Units (SI). Tesla can also be viewed as a unit of magnetic induction. At one time, high-frequency currents were known as Tesla currents.
One Tesla is equal to one Weber per square meter, or 10,000 Gauss (which means scientists often use Gauss to measure weak magnetic fields, leaving Tesla to be stronger and those used in magnetic resonance imaging. Weber is the unit of magnetic flux that can thought of as the amount of magnetic energy flowing through an area, such as the surface of a magnet.
Weber got its name in honor of Wilhelm Eduard Weber, a German physicist famous for his work in the field of terrestrial magnetism and the invention of the electromagnetic telegraph in 1833.
He was a prolific inventor
During his long career, Tesla has registered more than 111 US patents and about 300 patents worldwide. By researching high frequency electricity and trying to improve Edison bulbs, which were only 5 percent efficient, Tesla developed the first neon lights. He presented them at the same fair in 1893, which we talked about above, weaving from luminous tubes the names of his favorite scientists - Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell. He also developed the first fluorescent lamps, which he illuminated wirelessly using electrostatic waves.
Tesla's invention and demonstration of radio-controlled mechanisms earned him the fame of a pioneer in robotics. The scientist described his "teleautomaton" as the first step in a robot race, although it had no more programmable or self-driving elements than a modern radio-controlled car.
Tesla's bladeless turbine rotated at such a speed that its components were deformed. Tesla didn't solve the problem, but modern materials like Kevlar, carbon fiber and titanium plastic have inspired some people to pick up where Tesla was stuck.
Tesla was also reported to have taken an X-ray in 1896, shortly after Wilhelm Roentgen.
He gave us a radio
Radio appeared on the crest of discoveries and innovations, but the development and improvement of his Tesla brought the world an understanding that it was Nikola Tesla who became the father of radio.
The scientist's work in this area was dictated by his desire to carry out wireless transmission of energy, that is, what radio is in essence.
Not only did Tesla file the first radio patents, he also gave a lecture in 1893 (two years before Marconi began experimenting with radio) in which he described how radio broadcasting works and demonstrated radio communication. By mid-1894, he had built and began testing a small portable radio station.
As with the induction generator and transformer, Tesla relied on the work of its predecessors, but with unprecedented foresight. James Clerk Maxwell suggested the existence of electromagnetic waves, Heinrich Hertz figured out how to transmit them, but the Tesla coil and Tesla's four resonant circuits for transmitting and receiving made radio a reality. His patents described the basic techniques that we still use when transmitting and receiving radio signals.
Tesla pioneered radio control - an idea he patented on November 8, 1898, and demonstrated it at the Madison Square Garden Electricity Show that same year.
Two more words: secret laboratories
Like any great scientist from some Bond film, any self-respecting god of science needs a secret laboratory - preferably somewhere far away and full of crazy machines. Tesla had a couple of them.
In 1899, Tesla built a laboratory in Colorado Springs to understand the secrets of high voltage and high frequency electricity. In one experiment, 13-meter metal masts sent powerful electrical impulses into the ground; in another, a Tesla coil fired a 30.5-meter arc of electricity across the room. The latter broke the dynamo of the electric company and plunged Colorado Springs into darkness.
While in Colorado Springs, Tesla proved the existence of terrestrial stationary waves (with which the Earth could conduct energy at certain electrical frequencies) to illuminate 200 lamps 40 kilometers away. As we know (unlike the movie "The Prestige"), Tesla never worked on teleportation of a person.
Tesla later built his second secret laboratory, Wardencliffe, closer to his home in Manhattan. The Shoreham, Long Island factory had a 50-ton, 57-meter transmission tower 36.6 meters underground, with 16 iron pipes buried 91.4 meters into the ground. Tesla planned to transmit energy through the planet using rods to "gain control of the Earth, so that the globe would become a quiver."
Tesla transformer
Tragic fate
We respect geniuses for their struggles and for their triumphs. Perhaps it makes us feel better about the fact that we have to pay for brilliance, and also because suffering humanizes those rare souls who work much more and better than us.
Tesla, an outsider, fought an unequal battle with the rich and savvy businessmen: Edison, who smeared his name and stole his fame; with Marconi, who took the radio market away from him and won the Nobel Prize for the stolen technology; with industrialist George Westinghouse, who built an empire on patents from broken agreements.
Tesla's loyalty to his first love, science and progress, cost him fame, fortune and, as some believe, sanity. It is likely that after losing J. P. Morgan's funding and with it dreams of Wardencliffe, Tesla suffered his first nervous breakdown. “This is not a dream,” he said. "This is simply a feat of scientific electrical engineering in a blind, cowardly and doubting world."
He electrified the world
Tesla's system of generators, motors and AC transformers powers the global industry, brings light to our homes and is at the heart of most modern electronics. Edison, although he was better known, left us only DC systems, which today are used mainly in batteries and accumulators.
The direct current irritated Edison, as he could not find a way to transmit it over a long distance. He struggled to convert the alternating current produced by his dynamos into direct current. Edison's solution included "commutators" - brushes that only allowed current to flow in one direction, but created ineffective friction and required frequent replacement.
Tesla's generators did not require such a clumsy approach. Moreover, his system could “step forward” to increase voltage and transmit current over long distances, and then “step back”, making the current possible for use in homes and factories.
While Edison and others were trying to work with direct current, Tesla revolutionized it by adding a second circuit that would “alternate” the current in phase, creating a prototype for a successful polyphase system.
The transformer, like the generator, was invented by Michael Faraday, but both lay in a deep box until Tesla unleashed their potential and harnessed electricity in check, making it work for the modern world.
Ilya Khel