Nikola Tesla

History, they say, written by the victors. But that is little consolation for women and men, to delete from the list. For many years in textbooks he wrote that the benefits of light and electricity gave us Thomas Edison, while genius whose groundbreaking technology that surprised and continue to surprise the world, closely clamped on the shelf science between Edward Teller (Edward Teller) and Thales of Miletus (Thales of Miletus).

On the threshold of the 20th century, electricity was within the reach of scientific curiosity - one of those concepts that hardly anyone could imagine at home to perform daily routine work. Nikola Tesla, perhaps more than anyone else, has turned this approach, but his pioneering research in the field of electricity is only a part of scientific and technological innovation, by which it can be written in the scientific pantheon of deities.

Tesla has not only expanded and revolutionized the work of predecessors, he also beat all his contemporaries a few steps. But like beautiful music is not enough to become a rock idol, and in science, to become an idol, you need more than innovative breakthroughs and amazing machines. The figure must have intriguing aspects - qualities like eccentricity, visionary and thirst to give himself all the science and the business. Nikola Tesla was such a man.

He saw the potential

At a time when the dollar was king, when scientists and engineers have built their business empire based on one or two breakthroughs, it focuses Tesla never deviated from his work. He was a prolific and sometimes poor.

While his competitors in the "war of currents" - the struggle between the camps of Tesla and Edison for electrical technology, who will reign in this world - clung tooth and nail to ensure that electricity monopoly, the desire to Tesla to get funding for their next big project was repeatedly defeated his interests in the protection of his patents and inventions.

Focus and vision Tesla brought just as much harm to the owner as good - society. Unlike Edison, he is not working on a public reputation, scoring the press and not to build an empire of business. Generally speaking, his work is beyond the comprehension of many of his contemporaries. Accordingly, Tesla often apply for funding of their research. For example, the Navy US.



He dreamed of a more

Like any inventor, change the world, Tesla was a man of vision, and his career was the most smoothly when it can transmit this vision to other pioneers. In 1893, its proposal to use AC instead of DC Edison won the tender for lighting World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago (the Chicago World Fair). This moment was a turning point not only in the "war of currents," he also allowed Tesla to realize most of its grand ambitions, including a childhood dream to use the energy of Niagara Falls.

Even after he won the Niagara contract, the majority of his supporters doubted that he's Tesla will work. The inventor was also convinced of the opposite. When midnight November 16, 1896 had turned the switch in Buffalo, 34 miles from New York, the lights were. After a couple of years, the station has expanded its influence in New York, which was 644 miles away. Tesla's childhood dream come true.

Tesla also proposed to control, or at least catalyzing, weather by electricity. He saw the possibility of transferring the world's energy, and with it the information - the first glimpses of the world of wireless communications. Scientists say an investor George. P. Morgan (JP Morgan): «When the wireless network is fully spread over the Earth, it will turn into a huge brain, capable of receiving a response from every part of it».

Two words: death ray

Oh, it seems we said "death ray"? We mean "a ray that can shoot down planes from the sky for hundreds of kilometers and to arrange infantry is very, very bad day».

Against the background of the gathering clouds of World War II, Tesla announced that he planned a new weapon - "a ray of peace" - which can put an end to the war. He saw in his device, which we know today as a stream of charged particles, a kind of "Chinese walls", protivovoennogo device that would protect the national borders. But the newspapers all got wrong. For example, a headline appeared on the front page of The New York Times July 11, 1934: "Tesla 78 years, conceived a new" death ray ».

The likelihood that a world power develops 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 - this is a quality that, in our opinion, inherent genius, and Tesla did not disappoint us.

Some say that Tesla built his greatest inventions, including an induction motor, is completely out of his mind. Unlike Edison, who was working on a method of trial and error, Tesla found that sometimes key decisions came to him during a blinding flashes of insight.

In his own words, Tesla suffered visual and auditory hallucinations, and have an increased sensitivity to vibration and strong light. He was also afraid of round objects, like pearls worn by women, and was fixated on the figure 3.

The inventor has also been known progressive aversion to germs, and ultimately limited their diet of cooked food. This phobia arose after research scientist colleagues showed tap water under a microscope. In later years the aging scientist kept pigeons in his hotel room, but also decently dressed, as always - that baffled all those who have tried to determine his true mental state.

Features of Tesla, it is worth noting, did not affect his socialization; reporters and friends described him as charming, modest and nice man.

He left the scientific unit

Apart from the fact that in his honor was named the company Tesla, Tesla, like Carl Friedrich Gauss, left his name to name the unit of magnetic flux density in the International System of Units (SI). Tesla may also be considered as a unit of the magnetic induction. At the time, high-frequency currents are currents known as Tesla.

One Tesla is equal to one Weber per square meter or 10,000 gauss (and hence, scholars often use the Gaussian measuring weak magnetic fields, leaving Tesla stronger and those used in magnetic resonance imaging. Weber - a unit of magnetic flux, which can be regarded as the amount of magnetic energy flowing through the region, for example, the surface of the magnet.

Weber was named in honor of Wilhelm Eduard Weber, a German physicist, known 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 300 patents worldwide. Investigating high-frequency electricity and trying to improve Edison's light bulb, which were effective for only 5 per cent, Tesla developed the first neon lights. He introduced them to the same Fair 1893, which we discussed above, woven of glowing tubes names of favorite scientists - Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell. He also developed the first fluorescent lamp that illuminated wirelessly using electrostatic waves.

The invention of radio-controlled mechanisms and demonstrating Tesla's fame brought him a pioneer of robotics. The scientist described his "teleavtomaton" as the first step in the race of robots, even though he was no more than self-programmed or elements than the current cars on the radio.

Bladeless Tesla turbine rotated with such speed that its components deformed. Tesla has not solved the problem, but modern materials like Kevlar, carbon fiber and titanium, plastic inspired some people to continue from the place where Tesla stuck.

It is reported that Tesla also did an x-ray in 1896, shortly after Wilhelm Roentgen.



He gave us the radio

Radio appeared on the crest of discoveries and innovations, but the development and improvement of its Tesla brought the world understanding of what Nikola Tesla became the father of radio.

Works of the scientist in this field were motivated by his desire to implement wireless power transmission, that is what is essentially a radio.

Not only that, Tesla registered the first patents radio, he also gave a lecture in 1893 (two years before Marconi began experimenting with radio), during which he told how the radio broadcasting and demonstrated. By mid-1894, he built and began testing a small portable radio.

As in the case of an induction generator and the transformer, based on the work Tesla precursors, but with unprecedented foresight. James Clerk Maxwell proposed the existence of electromagnetic waves, Heinrich Hertz figured out how to pass them, but the Tesla coil and four Tesla resonant circuits for transmitting and receiving radio made a reality. His patent describes the basic methods by which we still use in transmitting and receiving radio signals.

Tesla was a pioneer radio - the idea he patented November 8, 1898, and showcased at the electricity at Madison Square Garden in the same year.

Two more words: secret laboratories

Like any great scholar of any Bond, any self-respecting god of science requires a secret laboratory - preferably somewhere far away and full of crazy cars. Tesla had a couple of these.

In 1899, Tesla built a laboratory in Colorado Springs, in order to comprehend the mysteries of high voltage and high frequency electricity. In one experiment, 13-foot metal mast send powerful electrical impulses into the ground; in another Tesla coil I shoot 30, 5-meter arc electricity across the room. The latter broke the dynamo electric company, and Colorado Springs plunged into darkness.

While in Colorado Springs, Tesla proved the existence of terrestrial stationary waves (by which Earth could conduct electrical energy at certain frequencies) for lighting 200 lamps in 40 kilometers away. As we know (in contrast to the film "The Prestige"), Tesla never worked on human teleportation.

Later, Tesla built his second secret lab Uordenkliff, closer to home in Manhattan. The factory in Shoreham, Long Island, had a 50-ton, 57-meter-high transmitting tower, a 36, ​​6 meters bygone underground, with 16 iron pipes, recessed at 91, 4 meters into the ground. Tesla planned to transfer energy through the planet, using the rods in order to "get a grip on the Earth, so that the globe would quiver».



The tragic fate of

We respect the genius of their struggles and their triumphs. We may become easier by the fact that you have to pay for the brilliance and the fact that humanizes suffering of those rare souls who work much more and better than us.

Tesla, an outsider, fighting in an unequal battle with the rich and savvy business: Edison, who smeared his name and stole his glory; Marconi, who took away his radio market and received the Nobel Prize for the stolen technology; with industrialist George Westinghouse, who built an empire on the patents of broken agreements.

Fidelity Tesla his first love, science and progress, cost him his fame and status, as some believe, sanity. It is likely that John lost funding. JP Morgan and with it the dream of Vordenkliffe, Tesla received his first nervous breakdown. "It's not a dream," - he said. - "It's just a feat of scientific electrical engineering from the blind, the faint-hearted and I doubt the world».

He electrified the world

The system of generators, motors and transformers AC Tesla supplies the global industry, brings light into our homes and is the basis of most modern electronics. Edison, though he was better known, left us only the DC system, which today is mainly used in batteries and accumulators.

DC unnerved Edison because he could not find a way to transmit it over long distances. He struggled to convert the alternating current produced his dynamo to DC. Edison's decision to include "switchers" - the brush, which allows current to flow in only one direction, but create poor friction and require frequent replacement.

Generators Tesla did not require such a clumsy approach. Moreover, his system could do a "step forward" to improve the voltage and current transfer over long distances, and then "step back", making it possible to use current in homes and factories.

While Edison and others have tried to work with a constant current, Tesla revolutionized by adding a second circuit that "alternated" to the current phase, creating a prototype of a successful multi-phase system.

Transformer as a generator was invented by Michael Faraday, but both were in a deep drawer until Tesla did not disclose their potential and electricity harnessed in a bridle, forcing him to work on the modern world.

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Source: hi-news.ru