Nikola Tesla

Great Lives

Dr. Aftab Ahmad, Anesthetist, King Saud Medical City, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

   Let the future tell the truth, and evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments. The present is theirs; the future, for which I have really worked, is mine.- Nikola Tesla

   Nikola Tesla, the eccentric and unbelievably underrated genius known as the Wild man of electronics, was without doubt one of the greatest minds in the history of the human race. Born in the Croatian town of Smiljan in 1856, he studied electrical engineering at the Austrian Polytechnic in Graz and later attended the Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague. Tesla initially started working under Tivadar Puskas in a telegraph company in Budapest. He was promoted to chief electrician and later engineer for the company. He later moved to Paris to work for the Continental Edison Company as an engineer. Tesla constructed his first induction motor in 1883 and immigrated to America in 1884 on recommendation of Charles Batchelor, a former Edison collaborator. Tesla began working with Thomas Edison, but the two men were worlds apart in both their science and idealogies and they soon parted ways. Tesla was offered the task of completely redesigning the Edison Company's direct current generators. In 1885, he said that he could redesign Edison's inefficient motor and generators, making an improvement in both service and economy.
   According to Tesla, Edison had remarked, "There's fifty thousand dollars in it for you,if you can do it." Edison's company was tightfisted with pay and didn't actually have such an amount. Tesla completed the work but on demanding his pay, Edison, saying that he was only joking, terming it as American humor. Instead, Edison offered $10-a-week raise over Tesla's US$18 per week salary; Tesla refused the offer and immediately resigned. Letting Tesla go wasn't the brightest thing Edison had ever done, though - George Westinghouse promptly snapped up the patent rights to Tesla's alternating-current motors, dynamos, and transformers. The buy-out triggered a power struggle which eventually saw Edison's direct-current systems relegated to second place, and the DC motors installed in German and Irish trains only a few years before, rendered obsolete.
   Tesla invented the alternating-current generator that provides our light and electricity, the transformer through which it is sent, and even the high voltage coil of your picture tube. The Tesla Coil, in fact, is used in radios, television sets, and a wide range of other electronic equipment. Invented in 1891, no-one's ever come up with anything better. Advocates of direct-current power - desperate to discredit their alternating-current competitor - claimed that AC current was hazardous to humans. In support of their argument, DC defenders took the novel approach of using a standard Westinghouse (AC) generator to discharge death sentences in New York State. In 1893, Westinghouse used Tesla's alternating current system to light the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Edison was not a happy man. His company, General Electric, had also bid for the lighting contract, but the GE proposal would have cost roughly twice as much and have produced less light for a lot more heat. Edison tried to ban the use of his light bulbs with Telsla's electrical system, and urged General Electric to bar the use of the company's lamps in any Westinghouse exhibits. Despite Edison's measures, Westinghouse soon gained a contract to build the massive turbines at Niagara Falls, and alternating-current was firmly entrenched.
   Within a short time, Tesla had pre-empted Wilhelm Rontgen's discovery of X-rays with his own experimental shadowgraphs - the relays, vacuum tubes, and transistors of future decades were to work with his very electric logic circuits. Even the wireless radio - the principles of which were described by Tesla in minute detail years before Marconi transmitted his first Morse code message. Tesla, on hearing of Marconi's efforts, is said to have remarked to a friend: "Marconi is a good fellow. Let him continue. He is using 17 of my patents." Eventually however, Tesla changed his mind, suing Marconi for patent breach. The court eventually went in Tesla's favour, after examining some circuit diagrams he had designed in 1893, and Marconi's patents were declared invalid in 1935. Unfortunately, the lawsuit dragged out until a few months after his death and he never got a penny in compensation.
   Turning to studies of resonance, by 1898 Tesla had designed an oscillator that generated half a million volts. The first time Tesla tested one of his inventions at full power, the roar was heard for more than 16 kilometers (10 miles). It also blacked out the entire city of Colorado Springs and set the power generator on fire. Tesla had to pay to replace the generator. In January 1900, capitalized by financier J P Morgan, Tesla returned to New York to work on his wireless world broadcasting tower. Even before Marconi's Morse code's' hit the airwaves, Tesla was determined that his invention wasn't going to be limited to dots and dashes. Tesla planned on linking the world together through its telephone and telegraph systems, transmitting pictures and text from one end of the globe to the other in minutes, and delivering mail between special terminals, using electronic messaging, basically what the Internet is today.
   Labour disputes and financial panic got in the way, and Tesla's Long Island construction was abandoned when Morgan withdrew funding. Much of Tesla's work was also lost when the Wardenclyffe Tower was dismantled for scrap towards the end of World War One. At the age of 81, Tesla challenged Einstein's theory of relativity, announcing that he was working on a dynamic theory of gravity that would do away with the calculation of space curvature. The theory was never published, but a similar theory involving gravity waves - developed in the mid-1990s - is used in the study of plasma cosmology today, which explains properties of energy and the structure of the universe by studying the electromagnetic effects of plasma. In 1943, at the age of 86, Tesla offered his much-waunted Death Ray to the US War Department. There is some confusion on whether the ray consisted of laser or particle beams (both of which Tesla had been mulling over for years), or if a working prototype had been developed or not. Tesla was unable to share the details. In a coincidence that raises the hackles of conspiracy theorists to this day, Tesla died sometime that evening and when his body was found three days later.

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   Let the future tell the truth, and evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments. The present is theirs; the future, for which I have really worked, is mine.- Nikola Tesla

   Nikola Tesla, the eccentric and unbelievably underrated genius known as the Wild man of electronics, was without doubt one of the greatest minds in the history of the human race. Born in the Croatian town of Smiljan in 1856, he studied electrical engineering at the Austrian Polytechnic in Graz and later attended the Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague. Tesla initially started working under Tivadar Puskas in a telegraph company in Budapest. He was promoted to chief electrician and later engineer for the company. He later moved to Paris to work for the Continental Edison Company as an engineer. Tesla constructed his first induction motor in 1883 and immigrated to America in 1884 on recommendation of Charles Batchelor, a former Edison collaborator. Tesla began working with Thomas Edison, but the two men were worlds apart in both their science and idealogies and they soon parted ways. Tesla was offered the task of completely redesigning the Edison Company's direct current generators. In 1885, he said that he could redesign Edison's inefficient motor and generators, making an improvement in both service and economy.
   According to Tesla, Edison had remarked, "There's fifty thousand dollars in it for you,if you can do it." Edison's company was tightfisted with pay and didn't actually have such an amount. Tesla completed the work but on demanding his pay, Edison, saying that he was only joking, terming it as American humor. Instead, Edison offered $10-a-week raise over Tesla's US$18 per week salary; Tesla refused the offer and immediately resigned. Letting Tesla go wasn't the brightest thing Edison had ever done, though - George Westinghouse promptly snapped up the patent rights to Tesla's alternating-current motors, dynamos, and transformers. The buy-out triggered a power struggle which eventually saw Edison's direct-current systems relegated to second place, and the DC motors installed in German and Irish trains only a few years before, rendered obsolete.
   Tesla invented the alternating-current generator that provides our light and electricity, the transformer through which it is sent, and even the high voltage coil of your picture tube. The Tesla Coil, in fact, is used in radios, television sets, and a wide range of other electronic equipment. Invented in 1891, no-one's ever come up with anything better. Advocates of direct-current power - desperate to discredit their alternating-current competitor - claimed that AC current was hazardous to humans. In support of their argument, DC defenders took the novel approach of using a standard Westinghouse (AC) generator to discharge death sentences in New York State. In 1893, Westinghouse used Tesla's alternating current system to light the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Edison was not a happy man. His company, General Electric, had also bid for the lighting contract, but the GE proposal would have cost roughly twice as much and have produced less light for a lot more heat. Edison tried to ban the use of his light bulbs with Telsla's electrical system, and urged General Electric to bar the use of the company's lamps in any Westinghouse exhibits. Despite Edison's measures, Westinghouse soon gained a contract to build the massive turbines at Niagara Falls, and alternating-current was firmly entrenched.
   Within a short time, Tesla had pre-empted Wilhelm Rontgen's discovery of X-rays with his own experimental shadowgraphs - the relays, vacuum tubes, and transistors of future decades were to work with his very electric logic circuits. Even the wireless radio - the principles of which were described by Tesla in minute detail years before Marconi transmitted his first Morse code message. Tesla, on hearing of Marconi's efforts, is said to have remarked to a friend: "Marconi is a good fellow. Let him continue. He is using 17 of my patents." Eventually however, Tesla changed his mind, suing Marconi for patent breach. The court eventually went in Tesla's favour, after examining some circuit diagrams he had designed in 1893, and Marconi's patents were declared invalid in 1935. Unfortunately, the lawsuit dragged out until a few months after his death and he never got a penny in compensation.
   Turning to studies of resonance, by 1898 Tesla had designed an oscillator that generated half a million volts. The first time Tesla tested one of his inventions at full power, the roar was heard for more than 16 kilometers (10 miles). It also blacked out the entire city of Colorado Springs and set the power generator on fire. Tesla had to pay to replace the generator. In January 1900, capitalized by financier J P Morgan, Tesla returned to New York to work on his wireless world broadcasting tower. Even before Marconi's Morse code's' hit the airwaves, Tesla was determined that his invention wasn't going to be limited to dots and dashes. Tesla planned on linking the world together through its telephone and telegraph systems, transmitting pictures and text from one end of the globe to the other in minutes, and delivering mail between special terminals, using electronic messaging, basically what the Internet is today.
   Labour disputes and financial panic got in the way, and Tesla's Long Island construction was abandoned when Morgan withdrew funding. Much of Tesla's work was also lost when the Wardenclyffe Tower was dismantled for scrap towards the end of World War One. At the age of 81, Tesla challenged Einstein's theory of relativity, announcing that he was working on a dynamic theory of gravity that would do away with the calculation of space curvature. The theory was never published, but a similar theory involving gravity waves - developed in the mid-1990s - is used in the study of plasma cosmology today, which explains properties of energy and the structure of the universe by studying the electromagnetic effects of plasma. In 1943, at the age of 86, Tesla offered his much-waunted Death Ray to the US War Department. There is some confusion on whether the ray consisted of laser or particle beams (both of which Tesla had been mulling over for years), or if a working prototype had been developed or not. Tesla was unable to share the details. In a coincidence that raises the hackles of conspiracy theorists to this day, Tesla died sometime that evening and when his body was found three days later.

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