Simple contemporaries were afraid of the scientist. He very rarely appeared on the street, had the reputation of a strange, unsociable person with a feverish gleam of black eyes. The scientist-inventor was followed by a strange ill-health, which he received during his experiments. Tesla often came under the influence of powerful electromagnetic fields. His nervous system acquired a special sensitivity. Eyes began to see in the darkness, sunlight caused severe pain, quiet rustles sounded like thunder. His most important invention, which he could not complete, and his followers were unable to repeat, - "Worldwide wireless system for the transmission of information and energy."
Nikola Tesla was born on July 10, 1856, in the village of Smilany (Croatia), in the family of the Serbian Orthodox priest Milytin Tesla. He was the fourth child, and it seemed that he was destined for the usual fate of a rural teenager.
From his recollections, he was a strange child. At the sight of pearls, the guy began to cramps, the taste of peaches caused a fever, and the sheets of paper floating in the water caused an unpleasant taste in the mouth.
The father wanted his son to make a spiritual career and forbade him to enter the Polytechnic Institute. Nikola was so upset that he immediately fell ill. Doctors warned that a lethal outcome was possible, and the father, wanting to cheer up his son, allowed him to go to college. Nikola soon recovered, but not completely. He himself recalled that after that illness, he began to have strange visions.
“Strong flashes of light covered pictures of real objects and simply replaced my thoughts. These pictures of objects and scenes had the property of reality, but they were always perceived as visions … In order to get rid of the torment caused by the appearance of "strange realities", I
focused on the visions of daily life. I soon discovered that I feel best when I relax and allow my imagination to draw me further and further. I constantly had new impressions, and so my mental journeys began.
Every night, and sometimes during the day, I, left alone with myself, went on these trips - to unknown places, cities and countries, lived there, met people, made acquaintances and struck up friendships and, no matter how incredible it may seem, it remains the fact that they were as dear to me as my family, and all these other worlds were just as intense in their appearances."
To his delight, Tesla noticed that he could clearly visualize his discoveries, even without needing experiments, models, or drawings. So he developed his new method of materializing creative concepts. Tesla very clearly defined ideas that are built into thought through visions, and those that arise through exaggeration (exaggeration).
However, no "pictures in the head" prevented Tesla from graduating from two universities and becoming a serious scientist: Tesla received a classical education, spoke several languages, graduated from the Polytechnic Institute in Graz (1878) and the Prague University (1880). His first position was as an employee of the telegraph office in Budapest.
In 1882 Tesla moved to Paris, then to Strasbourg. He worked as an electrical engineer, took his first steps as an inventor and electrical engineer, in Strasbourg in 1883 he manufactured his first electric motor.
In Paris, Thomas Edison drew attention to his abilities, and Tesla was invited to a meeting with the famous inventor. In 1884, Nikola Tesla, at the invitation of Edison, moved to New York. Having landed in New York without a penny of money, he was immediately convinced that this was a country of great opportunities. Walking down Broadway, Tesla saw people trying to fix an electric motor. He immediately earned $ 20.
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Edison "threw" Tesla for 50 thousand dollars
After moving to the United States, Tesla began working for Edison's company and offered him a number of transformations.
The fact is that Edison's system used direct current, for which it was necessary to build powerful stations every few miles. Tesla tried to convince him that alternating current was more efficient and less expensive. But Edison took part and felt Tesla as a talented competitor. The genius of this young man really exceeded the dignity of Edison himself!
Edison did not support Tesla's revolutionary plans for the use of alternating current. In the end, they fell out completely when Tesla told Edison that he could prove in practice the simplicity of creating new machines and the benefits of using them. Edison promised him 50 thousand dollars for such work at one enterprise. Tesla prepared twenty-four types of devices and completely transformed the plant. Edison was deeply impressed, but did not pay the money, announcing his promise as the appearance of "American sense of humor." Instead of a bonus, Edison offered the engineer a $ 10 a week salary increase. But he refused and quit.
However, this was not a step towards nowhere. George Westinghouse was himself an inventor and considered Tesla a genius. He bought patents for the systems of transmission and distribution of multiphase currents developed by Tesla (including generators, electric motors and transformers) and applied them in his hydroelectric power station on the Niagara Falls. Meanwhile, Edison tried to prove the danger of alternating current to human life, for which he demonstratively killed a dog with alternating electric current. Edison died in oblivion.
Internet of the early twentieth century
Tesla received financial independence and public attention to his developments. In 1888, Tesla discovered the phenomenon of a rotating magnetic field, on the basis of which he built high and ultrahigh frequency electric generators. In 1891 he designed a resonant transformer (Tesla transformer), which allows obtaining high-frequency voltage fluctuations with an amplitude of up to a million volts, and was the first to point out the physiological effect of high-frequency currents.
In Madison Square Garden, he demonstrated remote control of small boats, but many people considered it witchcraft.
The standing waves of the electric field observed during a thunderstorm led Tesla to the idea of the possibility of creating a system to provide electricity to consumers remote from the generator of energy without using wires, which gained great fame after the experiments in Colorado Springs (he connected the second leads from Colorado Springs to the ground from Colorado) and the lights came on.
Thus, he showed that the earth carries an electric current.
With the aid of a 200-foot coil, the pole of which was headed by a large copper sphere towering over his laboratory, Tesla generated potentials that were discharged by bolts of lightning up to 135 feet long. The thunder from the released energy could be heard 15 miles away. People walking the streets were amazed to see sparks bouncing between their feet and the ground, and electric lights leaping out of the crane when someone unscrewed it to drink water. Around the experimental tower blazed a ball of light 100 feet in diameter. The horses in the harness received shock electric shocks through their metal horseshoes and metal objects in the stalls. Even the insects were damaged: the butterflies became electrified and "helplessly circled around on their wings, beating with streaks of blue halos of St. Elmo's Fire."
In 1899 Tesla publicly demonstrated lamps and motors operating on high-frequency current without wires. In the end, Tesla's experiments destroyed the generator at the local power station, and in 1900, Nikola Tesla returned to New York, where he undertook, at the behest of banker JP Morgan, for the construction of a tower for transatlantic communications. The project was based on the idea of ionospheric resonance swing, attended by 2000 people and received the name "Wardenclyffe".
Morgan has donated $ 150,000 and a 200-acre site on Long Island. There, construction began on the Shoreham Tower, 187 feet high with a steel shaft dropped 120 feet into the ground. This tower was topped by a 55 ton metal dome, 68 feet in diameter. In 1905, she underwent a complete explosion, which brought a grandiose success: dumbfounded journalists wrote that he lit the sky in a space thousands of miles above the ocean. It was a triumph and a climax.
But … back on December 12, 1900, Marconi sent the first transatlantic signal, the letter "S", from the Angian Cornell to Canada at Newfindland. The Marconi communication system turned out to be much more promising and less expensive, and Tesla not only went beyond the budget, but also acknowledged to Morgan that his goal was not a communication system, but a wireless transmission of energy to any point on the planet. But Morgan was interested in exactly the connection and he withdrew funding. The project went bankrupt and the disgraced Tesla went into the shadows.
After the closure of the Wardencliff project in 1905, Tesla, as a scientist, performed anonymously, until his death at 87 years of age - January 7, 1943. In these last years Tesla preferred to work in solitude, away from human eyes.
Simple contemporaries were afraid of the scientist. He very rarely appeared on the street, had the reputation of a strange, unsociable person with a feverish gleam of black eyes. The scientist-inventor was followed by a strange ill-health, which he received during his experiments. Tesla often came under the influence of powerful electromagnetic fields. His nervous system acquired a special sensitivity. Eyes began to see in the darkness, sunlight caused severe pain, quiet rustles sounded like thunder.
His most important invention, which he could not complete, and his followers were unable to repeat, - "Worldwide wireless system for the transmission of information and energy." A power transmission station could direct electrical energy to any point on the Earth, reflecting it from the ionosphere - the upper layers of the atmosphere and through the Earth itself. It could be used by everyone - ships, planes, factories, it is enough for them to have an energy receiving installation. The same system could, according to the scientist, broadcast accurate time signals, music, drawings, facsimile texts to the whole world. And with the help of an ordinary telephone, one could call anywhere in the world.
Tesla even built a power transmission station on Long Island. But the first experiments were unsuccessful, and then the First World War began, and at the request of the military, work was prohibited - it was suspected that Tesla was transmitting information to the Germans and their Austrian allies.
Documents and drawings of the "World System" after the death of the scientist were not found.
Tesla's experiments from the film "Prestige"
What is attributed to the inventor
Tunguska disaster
There is a version that on June 30, 1908, no meteorite fell near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Siberia. And the explosion is a consequence of Tesla's experiments with the transfer of energy over long distances.
In the spring of that year, Tesla wrote in a letter to the editor of the New York Times: "… Even now, my wireless power plants can turn any area of the world into an area not suitable for living …"
And on the night of June 30, many observers in Canada and Northern Europe noted clouds of an unusual silvery color in the sky, which seemed to be pulsing. This coincides with the accounts of eyewitnesses who previously observed Tesla's experiments in his laboratory in Colorado Springs.
The electric car drove a week without recharging
In 1931, Nikola Tesla, together with the engineers of the Pierce-Arrow automobile company, conducted a funny experiment. In a car of this brand, the gasoline internal combustion engine was replaced by an electric motor. Tesla connected a box measuring 60x30x15 cm with two rods sticking out of it to the electric motor. I pressed the gas pedal … The car worked without recharging for a week, while it was tested by specialists. Then Tesla took his box, and no one else ever saw it.
Earth-lamp
In 1914, the inventor proposed a project according to which the entire globe, together with the atmosphere, was to become a giant lamp. To do this, you just need to pass a high-frequency current through the upper layers of the atmosphere, and they will begin to glow. But Tesla did not explain how to do this, although he repeatedly claimed that he did not see any difficulties in this.
Death Rays
In 1933, Tesla reported in the newspapers that he had discovered some "death rays" capable of destroying aircraft from a distance of 400 kilometers. At the beginning of World War II, he offered to buy this technology to the governments, first the US and then the UK. But both of them for some reason refused.
Signals from Mars
In 1926, Tesla installed a radio mast in his laboratory in New York. And he caught radio signals of unknown origin. He named Mars as one of the possible sources. They laughed at him, but the scientist himself said: "For such a miracle (establishing communication with other worlds - Ed.) I would give my life!"
Philadelphia experiment
The most famous rumor associated with Tesla's name is the disappearance of the destroyer Eldridge. Allegedly, before the Second World War, the scientist began to cooperate with the US Navy, creating a "invisibility screen" of ships for enemy radars. Tesla himself failed to conduct the experiment - he died on January 7, 1943, but 10 months later, on the destroyer Eldridge, the military, with the help of Nikola Tesla's generators, "inflated an electromagnetic bubble." However, an unexpected effect appeared. The ship became invisible not only to radars, but also to the human eye. He disappeared, and then he was allegedly found two hundred kilometers from the site of the experiment. All members of the Eldridge crew suffered severe mental illness.
Where did the archive go?
After the death of the scientist, no papers, notebooks, or drawings were found in his hotel room. Perhaps he destroyed them himself? Or did they end up in some secret archives of the US government? After all, according to rumors, several days after Tesla's death, FBI officers worked in his room.
The mystery of today is that the dates given in this article are absolutely reliable … and the reasons for the Tunguska catastrophe have not been disclosed … We only know that many special services worked at the site of this disaster, but did they find any evidence?
Until now, I am interested in a lot of the life of this scientist, but the main mystery remains whether this person could transmit electricity without wires, or is it an invention of historians and a myth that has come down to us? Most likely, we will never find the answers to these questions, we can only say with certainty that Nikola Tesla is an outstanding physicist and a very mysterious person.
Based on materials from the network.