 from the Tesla Museum (Belgrade) |
Nickola Tesla (1857-1943) was an eccentric genius inventor and scientist. He was born in what was Serbia at the time but received most of his upper level
education in Austria. He was an avid inventer at very young age. Margaret Cheney recorded many amusing anecdotes in her book "Tesla: Man Out of Time". A short Britannica Online biography outlines the major events in his life. (If you are interested, a patent list is available.) His most significant contributions were probably in the design of AC (alternating current) motors and dynamos. Tesla was a great promoter of the AC technology for commercial electrical power distribution. (Edison relentlessly pursued the DC technology...and eventually lost!) Westinghouse became a world leader in AC induction motors, transformers, and power plant generators through Tesla's patented inventions. Tesla's polyphase alternating current system was first demonstrated at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893. |
| But he is probably best known to physics students for the Tesla coil. This is a high voltage induction device still used today in radio and television transmission. It can also provide an awesome continuous spark, which will be demonstrated in next week's lab! Tesla had a reputation for great scientific intuition. However, as is often the case, he suffered in other areas such as financial and social savvy. (He should have been a millionaire for his AC inventions, but Westinghouse took advantage of his naivete.) He had few close friends and he distanced many other scientists with rash behavior and judgment. Historians and engineers even today look over his voluminous notebooks for the infamous "Death Ray" he claimed to have built. |
 Visit The Tesla Coil Web Ring |
Nicola Tesla was a visionary and a futurist. Some of his visions seem farfetched even today, while others seem amazingly accurate. In the Electrical Experimentor magazine of 1919, he wrote "If we were to release the energy of the atoms or discover some other way of developing cheap and unlimited power at any point of the globe this accomplishment, instead of being a blessing, might bring disaster to mankind... ". If you'd like to know more about Tesla, a good starting point is the International Telsa Society.
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