THE LIFE OF NIKOLA TESLA

The Life of Nikola Tesla Jason Hacken SLCC Physics 1010 Section 003

THE LIFE OF NIKOLA TESLA

The Life of Nikola Tesla Nikola Tesla was born in 1856 in Smiljan, Austrian Empire (modern-day Croatia). As a young boy, he showed much interest in inventing things. As a summer recreational activity he made a smooth waterwheel which would form the basis for his future invention of the bladeless steam turbine. Some other inventions that he created at a young age were a cornstalk popgun, which contained principles that Tesla later adapted when he fashioned a particle beam weapon and a propeller driven by sixteen mayflies. By the age of twelve he developed a philosophy of self-denial and self-mastery which played itself out repeatedly throughout his life. He wrote that as a junior high school student, he "was very interested in electricity almost from the beginning of my educational career. I read all that I could find on the subject... [and] experimented with batteries and induction coils." Through intense study he was able to compress four years of school into three and then went on to study engineering, despite his father wanting him to go into the ministry (Seifer, 2001). While planning on becoming a professor, he studied twenty hours a day, learned nine languages and memorized some of the works of Descartes, Goethe and Shakespeare. He studied the works of philosophers such as David Hume, Aristotle and John Locke and espoused the idea of "tabula rasa;" that our minds are blank slates when we are born. This helped Tesla to have an open minded worldview when creating inventions during his life. During his second year of college, his physics professor had a DC dynamo delivered to his class. It had a commutator, a device to transfer the current from the generator to the

THE LIFE OF NIKOLA TESLA

motor. Tesla thought that the device could work without the commutator and deliver AC current unencumbered by it's brushes. This new idea pervaded his thoughts for years and it eventually paved the way for his entire future. He gained employment as an engineer with the American telephone exchange in Budapest, Hungary and it was there that he was first introduced to Thomas Edison's creations such as the multiplex telegraph and telephone mouthpiece. He took the opportunity to analyze, take apart and improve upon those inventions. He formed the mouthpiece into a cone and making an amplifier, he invented an early loudspeaker (Seifer, 2001). In the early 1880's he finally figured out his AC motor idea by using multiple circuits that were out of phase to create AC voltage without the use of a commutator or brushes. In 1884 he moved to America and while working for Edison's company and after having many conversations with Edison himself, he realized that their basic philosophies was quite different. Edison used trial and error when coming up with inventions and Tesla relied on his academic training and mathematical skills when problem solving (Seifer, 2001). Edison's

manager told Tesla that he would pay him $50,000 to redesign Edison's DC machinery since they would not accept his AC motor plans. When Tesla completed the work, Edison decided not to pay him and in 1885 Tesla left the company and started his own. However, the people that he created this new company with were not interested in his AC motor designs and they fired him. Tesla sold his patents on the AC motor system to George Westinghouse in 1888 (Seifer, 2001). In the same year the Battle of the Currents took place where Edison and

THE LIFE OF NIKOLA TESLA

Westinghouse had a publicity battle over which form of electricity, DC or AC, would be safest for the public. Edison had people electrocute and torture animals with AC current to show the dangers of Westinghouse and Tesla's inventions. This led to the first execution by electrocution. Despite the bad publicity, Tesla's polyphase AC system won out over DC because of its ability to carry electricity over long distances (Seifer, 2001). In 1889 Tesla moved to New York where he started his own laboratory. He experimented with DC to AC conversion and the connections between electricity, matter and light. He started to work on wireless power transmission and successfully demonstrated it in front of an audience by putting tens of thousands of volts through his own body while holding a lightbulb. The lightbulb lit up without wires and sparks shot out of his fingers. While working with light generation, he created what was probably laser beams and while studying wireless transmission he came up with ideas about the atom that predate Rutherford, Bohr and Einstein by a decade (Seifer, 2001). In 1891 he invented a high voltage low current transformer called a Tesla Coil that he used for electrical lighting, phosphorescence, X-ray generation, high frequency AC voltage, electrotherapy, and wireless electric transmission. In 1895 his laboratory burned down and he lost years of research notes. He moved his studies to Colorado Springs, Colorado where he worked on wireless radio, figuring out the natural resonance frequency of Earth, and transmutation. He successfully created artificial lightning that was heard fifteen miles away and which knocked out power to all of Colorado Springs. With artificial lightning he was hoping to control the weather (Cheney, 2001). In 1906 he invented the bladeless turbine and in 1917 with the war raging in

THE LIFE OF NIKOLA TESLA Europe he came up with the military use of Radar. He also came up with the idea of a

charged particle beam that could destroy anything, men or machines, approaching within a radius of 200 miles. It will, so to speak, provide a wall of power offering an insuperable obstacle against any effective aggression. (Cheney, 2001) Tesla died in New York in 1943 at the age of 86. He has over 300 patents in his name worldwide.(arboh, 2006)

THE LIFE OF NIKOLA TESLA

References Seifer, Marc J (2001). Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla: Biography of a Genius. Citadel. ISBN 978-0-8065-1960-9. Cheney, Margaret (2001) [1981]. Tesla: Man Out of Time. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-0-7432-1536-7. arboh, Sneana (1820 October 2006). "Nikola Tesla's Patents"(PDF). Sixth International Symposium Nikola Tesla. Belgrade, Serbia. p. 6. Retrieved from http://web.archive.org/web/20071030134331/http://www.tesla-symp06.org/papers/TeslaSymp06_Sarboh.pdf