In many ways, our electrical world owes its current technological state to a scientist from Serbia. During his years of inventive activity, he received more than 300 patents, developed the AC motors that spurred the industrial revolution, and did not live long before the recognition of his contribution to the discovery of radio. Onliner.by tells about the man who invented the 21st century.
Nikola Tesla was born on July 10, 1856 in the village of Smilyan (the border region of the then Austrian Empire) in the family of a local parish priest. The father hoped that the guy would continue his working career, but since childhood, Nicola was interested in something completely different. At first he made slingshots and engaged in all the pranks inherent in children. Tesla was left-handed, but, of course, he was retrained at school. However, the genius subsequently was equally well controlled with both hands.
This Tesla is now in the village of Smilyan
Until the end of his life, Tesla recalled how he first became acquainted with electricity. At the age of six, his main friend was a black cat, with whom they opposed the yard goose. Once Nikola was playing with a cat in the evening twilight. The boy stroked the animal's back when "the cat's back was enveloped in a light blue glow," and a whole sheaf of sparks appeared from the touch. The fact that this is electricity living in frightening lightning strikes Tesla to the core.
Later, his family moved from the village to the city, and Nikola himself began to go to high school. In his autobiography regarding this period of his life, he wrote about his almost supernatural abilities, which helped him solve mathematical and physical problems. In Tesla's head, it was as if a board appeared with a description of the problem, and behind it appeared its solution. Therefore, he answered the teacher's questions orally after a minute or two. Didn't even have time to write down the solution. In addition, the scientist until old age was accompanied by "light phenomena" that arose in his head at moments of insight into new ideas.
To say that Tesla was strange would be an understatement. He hated women's earrings, the mere sight of a pearl was offensive to him, and the sight of a peach threw him into a fever. Over time, in adulthood, new ones were added to these oddities. Having once looked at microbes under a microscope, Nicola acquired the habit of ordering 18 napkins in restaurants in order to personally wipe all the appliances. A fly that landed on the table during dinner could force Tesla and his companions to move to a new one.
To all this, the inventor was an extremely erudite polyglot. He had a photographic memory, he recited Goethe's Faust by heart and spoke eight languages: Serbo-Croatian, Czech, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian and Latin. Despite the fact that young Nikola was a nerd, it was difficult to call him an asocial type. In his student years, the future scientist got hooked on gambling: billiards, chess and cards. At the gaming table, Tesla could spend several days without a break. He showed the same efficiency later, working in his laboratories.
Scheme in the sand
Tesla figured out how to use a rotating magnetic field in practice. It happened in 1882 while walking around Budapest and quoting Goethe's Faust. Prior to this, for several months the scientist was tormented by a strange illness, the nature of which, most likely, was the extreme exhaustion of the body due to overwork. “A fly that landed on a table in a room made a dull sound in my ear, reminiscent of the fall of a heavy body,”- wrote the inventor in his autobiography. Only walks and gymnastics under the supervision of a friend helped the scientist to get out of a clouded state.
The picture is illustrative. Most likely, it does not depict Tesla, but a loving swimming instructor.
During one of these walks, Nicola literally lit up. In an instant, he understood how his engine would work, and began to draw a diagram right on the sand. She changed the fate of Tesla himself, and the world in which we live.
AC/DC
In those years, city streets were lit with gas lamps or electric arc lamps. Neither the first nor the second method was suitable for light in the closed dwellings of ordinary inhabitants. Electric light only came to homes in 1879, when Thomas Edison perfected the light bulb to commercially viable parameters.
Edison and his lamp photo
Tesla arrived in New York in 1884. Prior to that, he worked for several years in the Paris regional branch of the Edison company. In the unspoken capital of the United States, Nikola continued to work more closely with his future rival. He tried to talk to the "king of the world" about the benefits of alternating current, but Edison was adamant - he saw the future in safe direct current.
Edison in 1870 and 1925
It is worth explaining here that in the United States of those years, Thomas Edison's power plants transmitted low voltage direct current (DC). But transmission was effective only over short distances. More precisely, for very short distances - up to two kilometers from the generator. The further the wires went, the more energy was lost along the way, which was extremely unprofitable from the commercial side.
Tesla advocated a variable electricity(AC), which did not particularly depend on the length of the wires. The problem was only in modulating the voltage at the input and output from the electrical wires to supply a safe current to the dwellings. This problem was solved by engineer William Stanley: a generator produces low-voltage alternating current, a transformer raises the voltage to the desired value, the current is transmitted over a great distance, and another transformer already lowers it.
In 1887, after leaving the factory of Thomas Edison, Nicola had to survive as a laborer until he met two partners, with whom he organized the Tesla Electric company. The scientist got his own laboratory.
Adepts of alternating current rested on one important detail - the lack of reliable electric motors that could turn various machines in factories and factories. Light bulbs in consumer homes in this case acted more like a PR campaign for all electricity combined.
Such a three-phase asynchronous motor is in the museum of the inventor in Serbia
The inventor worked on the entire system of equipment for the transmission of alternating current at once: generators, meters, transformers. And over AC motors. Tesla motor just used electro rotation magnetic field. Two different alternating currents were supplied to the poles of the electric motor, differing from each other by a phase shift. This caused the magnetic field to rotate. It carried the rotor winding along with it. Nikola began to develop the idea of a two-phase current, while noting that the number of phases could be large. In 1888 he received the first patents for AC motors.
Railroad tycoon Westinghouse
Tesla's design appealed to the tycoon George Westinghouse, who, in defiance of Edison, worked with alternating current lighting. He bought the patents and hired Nicola himself to work as a consultant. With the achievements of an outstanding Serb, the company rushed forward, frightening Edison, who launched a "black PR" against AC. The result of this, in some way, was the creation of the electric chair. On it, criminals were executed with alternating current. Thus Edison tried to prove his danger.
Fire
Having become rich, Tesla moved to his own laboratory, where he continued to work on a wide variety of inventions. So, in the early 90s, he demonstrated to the astonished public a lamp without a filament, which was not connected to any wire, but still glowed. It was like a Geisler gas-discharge lamp placed in an alternating electromagnetic field of high frequency. Later, Tesla would fill these lamps with luminoforms, making the prototype of modern fluorescent lamps. Edison did not like the competitor of his incandescent lamps. He called it a dead white light, dangerous to the eyes.
Like a skilled swordsman, Tesla demonstrates his wireless lamps
On March 13, 1895, the inventor suffered a serious blow. His laboratory in New York on Fifth Avenue burned down completely. Apparently, due to a short circuit in the building, a fire started, which in a few hours completely destroyed the works of Tesla's entire life: instruments, all experimental installations, drawings and documents, entries in the engineer's diaries. Under the onslaught of reporters, Nicola behaved with dignity. He said that everything could be restored, except for the letters of his relatives.
Despite Tesla's phenomenal memory, these words sounded more like bravado to journalists. It would have been possible to partially restore the developments, only for this a new laboratory was needed. The burnt one was estimated at $ 250 thousand. And Tesla did not know where to get that kind of money. Newspapers called the fire not a personal loss of a scientist, but a tragedy for the whole world.
The house was not insured, and the equipment belonged to Westinghouse Electric, a company that owed a lot to Tesla. Nicola practically saved its founder when, during the crisis, he refused his patent payments: Westinghouse pledged to pay $ 2.5 for each sold horsepower of his motors. By 1905, that would have been $17.5 million. But Westinghouse's company was in a sorry state, and the founder gave Tesla a choice: either we take your motors and alternating current into the world, or we pay you the money and shut down. It is alleged that the inventor broke that contract in front of Westinghouse.
Many problems were hidden behind the outer gloss
When Tesla himself was in trouble, Westinghouse Electric employees billed him for the destroyed equipment and did not provide any deferrals on payments for new ones. Why the founder of the company was silent is unclear.
But Nikola by that time was already world famous and received patronage from an American entrepreneur. He was offered to create a joint company, to finalize the same radio invention to a commercial model, but the inventor saw prospects in working on high-frequency current. Biographers of the scientist call this the main mistake of Tesla, which negatively affected his life.
x-ray
Tesla could well claim the discovery of X-rays, which were first described by Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen in 1895. Back in 1887, a Serb was experimenting with vacuum tubes. Introducing them into the field of high-frequency currents, Nikola registered two types of radiation: visible light and ultraviolet radiation. But there were also very special rays that left strange imprints on metal screens.
Six years later, during a public lecture, Tesla returned to these rays, noting their ability to penetrate objects, which made it possible to see objects in boxes. But due to the extreme employment and dispersion of the scientist on various objects, the study of rays did not advance further. Only the discovery of Roentgen opened the eyes of Nicola, who, however, did not claim the championship. However, he firmly clung to the topic, published a dozen scientific articles on the nature of rays and improved the X-ray machine.
One of Tesla's x-rays
Tesla scanned everything and everyone in a row: dogs, his colleagues and himself. At the same time, in order to obtain some images, it was necessary to sit under the installation for an hour, during which the researcher often fell asleep. At first, he believed that the radiation was completely harmless: he irradiated his head, eyes, hands. Until he got his first burns.
Tesla earthquake machine
Later, Tesla lost interest in radiation and started working with ultrasound, which the neighbors of his laboratory learned about in the most unpleasant way - the scientist literally caused an earthquake in New York. At least he, and later his biographers, spoke about this incident.
Nikola's laboratory was adjacent to a police station, various factories and Italian houses. On a spring morning in 1898, the police station began to shake: furniture shook, shutters and doors opened and clapped by themselves. In a panic, the population of the area ran out into the street, assuming the devastating aftershocks of the earthquake. The police rushed straight to Tesla, who was considered the culprit of all the high-profile events.
They found the scientist in the laboratory with a sledgehammer in his hands. With it, he thrashed at a certain device attached to the support of the building. The last blow, and the device crumbled, the earthquake stopped. It was Tesla's oscillator - a generator of ultra-high frequency mechanical oscillations that produced ultrasound. These vibrations caused an internal resonance in objects when they coincided with the frequency of their own vibrations. In these principles, Nikola saw great destructive power. With enough dynamite, the inventor promised to split the Earth in two.
Of course, these stories turned out to be just stories for the reporters. Later experiments with the machine called into question its omnipotent abilities.
Radio Tesla
Back in 1890, Tesla predicted the appearance of an apparatus that would allow its owner to listen to music, songs and human speech in the sea or on land at a great distance from the sound source. "In the same way, any picture, drawing, sign or text can be transmitted,"- added the scientist. In a way, Nikola was the first harbinger of the Internet.
As for the radio, Tesla not only ranted, but also conducted some experiments. In particular, the son of one of his assistants, many years later, spoke of a demonstration of what was called "radio". The experiment involved a transmitter and a receiver, from both to the ceilings there were long wires, which were, apparently, antennas. Messages were transmitted from a 5-kilowatt spark transmitter to a receiver Geissler tube at a distance of 9 meters. The fact that Tesla conducted similar experiments in 1893 was also mentioned by Alexander Popov. In particular, he noted the "use of the mast" for receiving and transmitting signals of electrical vibrations.
The godfather of radio
But the Italian Marconi was a much more cunning businessman than Tesla. On the second attempt, he managed to challenge the Serb's American patents for the "Electric Power Transmission System" and for the corresponding apparatus (US 645576 and US 649621). Thus, he left Nicola without patent payments and without fame, having received Nobel Prize. It is worth noting that Marconi's contribution to the promotion of radio is invaluable. However, litigation between him and Tesla continued for more than a decade. The latter believed that Marconi was simply robbing him. And only after the death of both inventors, the US Supreme Court put an end to the championship, restoring the Serb's patents for electrical communication without wires.
radio control
Tesla's superiority is evidenced by at least the fact that in 1893 he began to develop remotely controlled machines. The scientist wrote that he worked hard on them for a couple of years and even created several mechanisms, but a memorable fire threw him far back. The first public demonstration took place in 1898 at an exhibition where the hated Nicole Marconi presented his remote mines.
The highlight of the event was the demonstration of Tesla's invention - a radio-controlled boat, in the middle of which a metal rod was sticking out, and there were light bulbs on the bow and stern. The Serb had a remote control in his hands. By changing the signals from the remote control, Nikola made the boat move forward and backward, perform various maneuvers.
To say that the demonstration caused a sensation would be an understatement. Tesla was offered to recycle the ship into a submarine and, loading it with dynamite, send it to undermine Spanish ships. The United States was at odds with this country in those years. But military experts did not see this as a matter of the near future.
The fading of genius
But Tesla cared little about the opinion of the military. He was sure that in the near future he would be able to transmit energy without wires. The idea of a fix struck the scientist, and he went to Colorado Springs to experiment. Biographers of Nikola note that with this trip the third - final and inglorious - period in the life of an engineer began. Great inventions are left behind, Tesla has gone down in history, and the remaining half of his life is a slow decline, which the scientist is not yet aware of.
In Colorado Springs, by order of the inventor, a 60-meter antenna was built, with the help of which Nicola was going to experiment with the wireless transmission of electricity. But so far, his tower, which the locals looked at with suspicion and apprehension, only generated lightning - as thick as an arm and more than four meters long.
Double exposure photograph from Colorado Springs. First they filmed lightning, and then Tesla himself
At the same station, Tesla, according to him, registered strange signals that could be a radio transmission from Mars or Venus. Reporters, of course, passed it off as a sensation. No evidence of Nikola's connection with aliens has ever been presented. The scientist was ridiculed both for this puncture and for his wild concept of transmitting electricity without wires - he could not explain how to achieve this in practice. So far, only lightning came out.
Despite all the negatives, Tesla received investments for the global radio network project, although he planned to deal with energy. With the money allocated by businessman Morgan, Nicola built a new laboratory and a tower in Wardenclyffe, which became famous throughout the world. Its construction, which began in 1901, immediately caused claims from the investor: he did not understand why to spend money on the tower, without which Marconi managed to transmit a signal almost across the entire Atlantic. Morgan became suspicious and cut funding.
Swan song of genius
Tesla revealed all his cards to him. The businessman planned to take a leading position in the radio market, but in fact threw away a huge amount of money on the Serb's fantastic plans. The scientist wrote letters of despair to him for a year, but after a couple of refusals, he was simply ignored. Creditors besieged Nikola, the site around the tower had to be sold piece by piece, and the building was literally taken apart brick by brick by looters.
The collapse of Tesla's last hopes affected his character. He began to work more with his tongue, and not with his head, talking about his new inventions, which would soon turn the world upside down. It was these hoaxes from the Serb himself that contributed to the creation of an aura of mystery around him: cosmic rays, the mystery of the Tunguska meteorite, spy traces of the USSR and Germany. There are many mysterious spots left in the engineer's biography that do not directly relate to his real inventions.
Nikola Tesla died at the age of 86. It happened between January 5 and 7, 1943, in room 3327 of the New Yorker Hotel on the 33rd floor. The scientist did not leave behind an inconsolable widow, children and grandchildren, as he lived all his life alone.
Nikola Tesla is one of the greatest people who owns a large number of inventions that changed our world forever. Tesla's life and biography are as unusual as he is.
Nikola Tesla was born in the village of Smilany on July 10, 1856 in a Serbian family. Orthodox priest(At that time Smilians were on the territory of Austria-Hungary, now in Croatia).
A curious episode belongs to the childhood years of Nikola Tesla, which probably determined his craving for electricity.
At the age of ten, he stroked a fluffy black cat, sitting on the porch of the house. Nikola noticed that between his fingers and the cat's fur, sparks jumped, clearly visible in the evening. His father told him that sparks, most likely, are "relatives" of lightning. This really sunk into Nicola's soul, clearly showing that electricity (which he still knew nothing about) can be both "tame" like a pet, and "wild" like lightning.
N.Tesla graduated from elementary school and a three-year real gymnasium in the city of Gospic, in 1970 he entered the higher real school in Karlovac, where he mainly studied mathematics and physics. He was especially impressed by Professor Martin Sekulich, who demonstrated his own invention - a light bulb covered with tin foil, which rotated rapidly when connected to a static machine:
“It is impossible to convey the feeling I experienced while looking at the demonstration of this amazing phenomenon. Each show echoed in my mind ... "Nicola decided not to follow in his father's footsteps, but to study engineering.
In 1875 he entered the Higher Technical School in Graz (now - Graz Technical University). In his second year, Tesla gets acquainted with the Gramme dynamo, which uses direct current. The collector of the machine consisted of several wire brushes that transmit current from the generator to the motor in one direction. The car sparked strongly, but it was considered last word technology. Tesla has the idea to abandon the collector and use alternating current, and at that moment he sets himself the goal of creating an electric motor that runs on alternating current.
After graduating from college, Tesla briefly taught in Gospic, studied for a semester at the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Prague, but due to financial difficulties he left his studies and first worked as an electrical engineer in a government telegraph company in Budapest, then got a job at the Edison Continental Company in Paris. In 1884, he moved to the USA, where he met Thomas Edison himself and Tesla was hired by his company as an engineer for the repair of electric motors and generators. direct current. Edison promised Tesla $50,000 if he could constructively improve Edison's DC electric machines. Tesla soon introduced 24 varieties of the Edison machine, a new commutator and regulator that greatly improved performance. Having approved all the improvements, in response to a question about remuneration, Edison refused Tesla, noting that he still did not understand American humor well, after which Tesla quit.
Unlike Edison, Tesla had an unusual gift - he could imagine any device or device in his mind, mentally test it, and then turn it into reality completely ready for use. Edison spent a lot of time experimenting, refining inventions. After Edison's death, Tesla said of him:
“If he had to find a needle in a haystack, he would not think about where it would be better to look for it, but with the feverish conscientiousness of a bee, he would begin to examine straw after straw until he found what he was looking for ...”
Tesla said this about his method:
“When an idea appears, I immediately begin to refine it in my imagination: I change the design, improve and “turn on” the device so that it heals in my head ... In a similar way, I am able to develop the idea to perfection without touching anything with my hands”Edison coldly accepted Tesla's new ideas, he had long relied on DC equipment and rejected ideas about AC motors.
After his dismissal, Tesla was left without a livelihood, in 1886 he survived at the expense of auxiliary work - he dug ditches for $ 2 a day.
"My higher education in various fields of science, mechanics and literature seemed to me a mockery," he writes bitterly in his diary.
During this period, he became friends with the engineer Brown, who was able to persuade several of his acquaintances to provide a small financial support to Tesla. In April 1887, the Tesla Arc Light Company, created with this money, began to equip street lighting new arc lamps, as well as to implement previously invented projects. For an office in New York, Tesla rented a house on Fifth Avenue not far from the building occupied by the Edison company. A sharp competitive struggle ensued between the two companies, known in America as the “War of the Currents”.
In 1888, Tesla still managed to create a reliable and fairly simple AC motor. He is invited to the American Institute of Electrical Engineers to give a lecture he calls " New system motors and AC transformers. Everything went great, the famous American designer B.A. Berend, in the debate after the lecture, said:
“Since the time of Faraday and his experiments with electricity, no experimental truth has ever been presented so simply and clearly as Tesla's description of his method of obtaining polyphase alternating currents. He left nothing for his followers to refine…”
In the same year, the famous American industrialist George Westinghouse bought more than 40 patents from Tesla, paying an average of $25,000 each.
Tesla is becoming more and more famous, they write about him in newspapers and magazines, he lectures, he demonstrates incredible experiments.
In 1892, while giving a lecture on the high-frequency electromagnetic field to scientists at the Royal Academy of Great Britain, Tesla lit electric bulbs in his hands. The electric motor was not connected to them by wires. Some lamps did not even have a spiral - a high-frequency current passed through the body of the inventor. The admiration of scientists knew no bounds, and after the lecture, physicist John Rayleigh solemnly seated Tesla in the chair of Faraday himself, accompanying this with the words: "This is the chair of the great Faraday. After his death, no one sat in it."
In 1893, Nikola Tesla designed the world's first wave radio transmitter, thereby beating Marconi by seven years. Using radio control, Tesla created "teleautomatic machines" - self-propelled mechanisms controlled from a distance. In Madison Square Garden, a scientist showed small boats with remote control. And in 1895, the Niagara hydroelectric power station (the largest in the world) was put into operation, and it worked with the help of Tesla generators.
In March 1895, a fire broke out in the laboratory on Fifth Avenue. There were rumors that the fire was the work of ill-wishers, thus hinting at Thomas Edison. The building burned to the ground, destroying the most recent achievements, but Tesla stated that he could restore them from memory. Financial assistance was provided by the Niagara Falls Company in the amount of $100,000 for the construction of a new laboratory. Already in the fall, research resumed, at the end of 1896, Tesla achieved the transmission of a radio signal over a distance of 48 km.
In May 1899, at the invitation of the local electric company, Tesla moved to the resort town of Colorado Springs, located on a plateau 2000 meters above sea level and characterized by severe thunderstorms. Tesla created a laboratory here, and specifically for the study of thunderstorms, he developed a transformer in which one end of the primary winding was grounded, and the other end was connected to a metal ball with a rod that could be pulled up. A sensitive self-tuning device was connected to the secondary winding, which, in turn, was connected to a recording device. This device made it possible to study changes in the Earth's potential, including the effect of standing electromagnetic waves caused by lightning discharges in earth's atmosphere(later this effect became known as "Schumann Resonance"). Observations led the inventor to the idea of the possibility of transmitting electricity without wires over long distances.
Tesla directed his next experiment to explore the possibility of independently creating a standing electromagnetic wave. In addition to many induction coils and other equipment, he designed an "amplifying transmitter." On the huge base of the transformer were wound turns of the primary winding. The secondary winding was connected to a 60-meter mast and ended with a meter-diameter copper ball. When an alternating current with a voltage of several thousand volts was passed through the primary coil, a voltage of several million volts and a frequency of up to 150 thousand hertz arose in the secondary coil. During the experiment, lightning-like discharges emanating from a metal ball were recorded, some of them reaching almost 4.5 meters in length, and thunder was heard at a distance of up to 24 km. Tesla concluded that the device allowed him to generate standing waves that propagated spherically from the transmitter, and then converged with increasing intensity at a diametrically opposite point. the globe, somewhere near the islands of Amsterdam and St. Paul in the Indian Ocean.
In the fall of 1899, Tesla returned to New York. 60 km north of New York on Long Island, he acquired a plot of land with an area of 0.8 km², which was located at a considerable distance from the settlements. Here Tesla planned to build a laboratory and a science town. By his order, a radio station project was developed - a 47-meter wooden frame tower with a copper hemisphere at the top. The implementation proceeded with great difficulties, because due to the massive hemisphere, the center of gravity of the building shifted upwards, depriving the structure of stability. Construction was completed in 1902, the tower was named Wardenclyffe. The production of the necessary equipment was delayed because the industrialist John Pierpont Morgan, who financed it, terminated the contract after he learned that instead of practical goals for the development of electric lighting, Tesla plans to research wireless transmission of electricity around the world. Paying off creditors, Tesla had to sell the land. The tower was abandoned and stood until 1917, then it was blown up and dismantled.
After 1900, Tesla received many other patents for inventions in various fields of technology (electric meter, frequency meter, a number of improvements in radio equipment, steam turbines, etc.), in 1917 Tesla proposed the principle of operation of a device for radio detection of submarines.
During his life he made about a thousand different inventions and discoveries. The most significant of them:
High-frequency electrical engineering (high-frequency transformer, RF electromechanical generator (including inductor type).
Multiphase electric current.
Radio communication and mast antenna for radio communication.
Tesla Coils. To this day, they are used to obtain artificial lightning.
The use of electrical devices for medical purposes
Rotating magnetic field phenomenon
Asynchronous motor
Description x-rays and ultraviolet radiation.
Fluorescent lamp
Radio controlled boat.
The unit of density is named after Tesla magnetic flux(magnetic induction).
His awards: Knight of the Montenegrin Order of Prince Danilo I, 2nd class (1895), Knight of the Grand Cross of the Order of the White Lion (Czechoslovakia), Golden medal Elliot Cresson (1894), Edison Medal (1916), John Scott Medal (1934).
Nikola Tesla was a bright and unusual personality, someone considered him an eccentric, someone a genius. He had a phenomenal memory and could memorize whole books word for word. He spent no more than 4 hours a day sleeping. He never had his own house and lived in hotels, while the apartment number had to be a multiple of 3. When walking, he always counted steps, and at the table he counted the volume of soup in bowls, the number of pieces eaten and cups of coffee drunk. His friends assumed that he had the gift of foresight. Another oddity - Tesla was very fond of pigeons. In hotel rooms, he kept 3-4 baskets with pigeons, the windows were always open and the pigeons flocked to his call, he fed them at any time of the day on city streets and squares. One dove was especially dear to him, for which he especially looked after and spent whole days during her illness. Tesla confessed to his friend and biographer John O'Neil: “When the dove died, something went out of my life. Until that time, I knew that I would certainly finish my work, no matter how ambitious the tasks I set for myself, but when this something left my life, I realized that my life's work was over ... "
Nikola Tesla - the man who lit up the world.
The exhibition is dedicated to the world-famous inventor, the author of brilliant discoveries, the magician of light and electricity, Nikola Tesla, who was born in Croatia. The first time it was shown at the UNESCO Palace in Paris in September 2006, then it traveled to Bratislava, Madrid, Kosice and Helsinki.
The exhibition tells about life path Nikola Tesla, which began in Croatian Smiljan and ended in the USA, about his research in the field of energy transmission, electromagnetic radiation, as well as about his famous inventions that changed the world and today form the basis of the latest technologies.
Quotes from Nikola Tesla's autobiographical book "My Inventions" will allow visitors to learn about the most important moments in the life and work of the inventor, about his originality, versatility, eccentricity, as well as awareness of his own mission.
First of all, the exhibition is educational in nature and presents working devices of Tesla's inventions - a transformer and a Columbus egg.
From July 14 to September 10, in the Peter and Paul Fortress, in the exhibition hall "Poterna and the casemate of the Sovereign Bastion" there will be a multimedia exhibition created with the assistance of the Nikola Tesla Technical Museum and the Museum of Croatian History - "Nikola Tesla - the man who lit up the world."
In 2003, Elon Musk, along with a group of talented engineers, founded a startup to design and manufacture electric cars. They named their brainchild Tesla Motors (now Tesla Inc.) in honor of the great scientist Nikola Tesla. It was he who more than 100 years ago came up with the engine scheme that is used in modern electric vehicles - it still remains a mystery how he managed to do this at the dawn of the development of modern physics. However, this is far from the only secret associated with the inventions and biography of the scientist.
Nikola Tesla was born on July 10, 1856 in the Serbian village of Smilany, which was then part of the Austrian Empire. From childhood, he was destined for the path of a servant of God, since his father and maternal grandfather were priests. Nikola s early years showed great interest in exact sciences and dreamed of becoming an engineer, but was going to enter the seminary, because he was afraid to sadden his parents with his choice. The chance to make his dream come true fell during the cholera epidemic. Seeing his son's face exhausted from illness, the father not only allowed him to follow the call of his heart, but also promised to help him enter the best educational institution in Europe.
In 1875, Tesla entered the Technische Hochschule in Graz. It is this date that he considers the beginning of his life. Nicola was delighted with educational process and worked like a man possessed. He became one of the best on the course. The teachers began to set Tesla as an example to other students, which caused strong hostility among classmates, which later turned into bullying. In desperation, Tesla decided to try and lead the same life as most students: go to pubs and gamble. It all started with billiards, and ended with cards. Naturally, every day there was less and less time left for study. As a result, in December 1878, for poor progress and bad behavior, he was expelled from educational institution. However, such a sharp turn of events did not stop the Serb from falling into the abyss for a second.
It is not known how it would have ended if in March 1879 he, like a tramp, had not been sent home under a police protocol. Tesla recalls this time in his diaries with bitterness and shame, because he not only abandoned his beloved business for no reason, but also drove his family into debt. After a serious conversation, first with his father, and then with his mother, the dissolute player and drunkard died in him forever. “My aversion to gambling became so strong that when I saw cards, a pool table or dice, I experienced the same feeling that I get when I see sewage,” the scientist wrote.
Life in Europe and the first inventions
Having ended his former wild life, Tesla, again obsessed with a thirst for knowledge, went to Prague to continue his education. A year later, one of his maternal relatives offered him a job building a telephone exchange in Budapest - knowledgeable and energetic engineers were required there. The young man gladly accepted the offer, as he was dissatisfied with the conditions of study at the University of Prague. Service in the company seemed to Nicola quite easy: thanks to the low pace of work, he had time to walk around Budapest and think about scientific topics.
Here Tesla made his first full-fledged invention - a telephone amplifier. The news of him quickly spread throughout Europe and created a good reputation for the novice scientist, so after the completion of the telephone exchange in 1882, Tesla quite easily got a job at the Edison Continental Company in Paris. In the capital of France, he held the position of an engineer for the installation and repair of electrical installations.
In 1883, Nikola Tesla was entrusted with the work of launching a new power plant at the railway station in Strasbourg, promising, if successful, a huge reward for those times in the amount of $ 25,000. The fact is that during the first attempt to open the station in the presence of high-ranking officials, a fire broke out due to a short circuit at the station substation and the wall collapsed, so the new power plant had to be launched as soon as possible. Tesla brilliantly coped with this difficult task, but the head of the local branch of the Edison Continental Company refused to pay the promised bonus. The offended novice inventor, despite the almost complete lack of savings, decided to quit.
Thoughts on Russia and moving to America
Unemployed Nikola Tesla faced a difficult choice of what to do next. He seriously thought about moving to Russia. He was attracted high level training and inquisitive mind of Russian engineers, whom he met in Paris. One of his acquaintances, Aleksey Zharkevich, even prepared a letter of recommendation to Nikolai Lyubimov, professor at Moscow University. However, an employee of the Edison Continental Company dissuaded Tesla from this venture, offering to work in America with Thomas Edison, who at that moment was an idol for the young inventor. The conditions that were offered seemed to Nicola quite acceptable. As a result, on July 6, 1884, Tesla set foot on American soil.
Working for Edison
Once in America, Tesla did not believe his luck. Behind somewhere far away were the Parisian disappointment and a long painful voyage on a ship, and ahead of him was a job as an engineer repairing electric motors and DC generators for one of the best inventors of that time, Thomas Edison. Tesla took up his duties with enthusiasm. He rather easily and quickly eliminated all conceivable and inconceivable problems in the existing inventions of the company.
Seeing the talent and burning eyes of the young engineer, Edison began to give more and more complex and complex tasks to the employee. Once he even promised Nicola $50,000 if he could constructively improve the DC electric machines patented by the company - they failed quite often. Tesla successfully coped with this task and presented 24 new versions of devices, after which he asked about the promised bonus. Edison laughed in response and said that the Serb did not understand American humor well - there would be no bonus, the maximum that Nikola could count on was an increase in his salary by $ 10 a week. From such a humiliating offer, the again deceived Tesla refused and quit.
Through thorns to your own laboratory
While working for the Edison Company, Tesla gained notoriety in certain circles. Quite quickly there were people who offered to create a new company of their own related to electric lighting issues. Tesla liked the idea. He began to engage in research in a new direction, which resulted in the invention of an arc lamp for street lighting.
In addition to the lamps, Nikola suggested that the partners study alternating current, but they refused, however, as well as to pay the money due to the scientist for the work done, or rather, they offered worthless shares of the company as compensation. Realizing that it would not be possible to agree, the pseudo-comrades got rid of Tesla, while slandering and discrediting him. Nikola was again out of work and money, but this time with a damaged reputation, so that no one wanted to hire him.
Tesla rented an office space on Fifth Avenue, near Edison's office, thereby trying to show his former employer and offender that, in spite of everything, he is alive and prospering. The reputation of the inventor began to recover. The president of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers became interested in him. In May 1888, at his invitation, Tesla gave a lecture to a group of scientists about his system of AC motors and transformers.
This lecture introduced Nikola to the famous industrialist George Westinghouser, who bought more than 40 patents from Tesla, and also invited the inventor to a consultant position at his factories in Pittsburgh, where industrial designs of AC machines were developed. Nikola gladly accepted this offer, because after several years of unsuccessful attempts to convince everyone of the promise of AC machines, he finally met a like-minded person. The industrialist was ready not only to invest in his development, but also to provide the scientist with everything necessary for work. The collaboration lasted about a year, after which Tesla returned to his laboratory in New York, because due to problems with the team, working for Westinghouse did not bring him pleasure and took a lot of time, making it impossible to think about new inventions.
War of the currents
There are two types of current: AC and DC. Alternating current has two main advantages over direct current: the ability to transmit electrical energy over long distances with minimal losses, as well as the simplicity and reliability of machines - generators and engines. However, even in late XIX century, few believed in this, since the main authority in science of that time, the industrialist, Thomas Edison, argued the opposite. In 1890, there were more than a hundred DC power plants in operation in the United States. Edison was going to significantly increase this figure and cover the entire country from Alaska to Florida with a network of his power plants.
However, Westinghouse and Tesla stood in his way, who relied not on direct, but on alternating current. There was a great confrontation between physicists, which was called the "war of the currents." According to the memoirs of Nikola Tesla, in order to win this difficult battle, Edison began to use "black" PR, for example, he began to spread rumors about the dangers of alternating current for life, in contrast to direct current. He even promoted the electric chair law, which used alternating current, to turn society against alternating current. However, in 1893, Tesla and Westinghouse managed to win and receive a huge order for 200,000 lamps for the Chicago World's Fair.
Tesla finally got the opportunity to work quietly. He was actively engaged in the study of high-frequency currents and the possibility of obtaining light through high-frequency oscillations in incandescent lamps. According to the scientist, the first half of the 1890s was the most productive period, but on March 13, 1895, disaster struck: a fire broke out in a laboratory on Fifth Avenue. The most recent achievements of the inventor: a mechanical oscillator, a test bench for new lamps for electric lighting, a mock-up of a device for wireless messaging on long distance and an installation for researching the nature of electricity - burned to the ground, as well as the building. Many accused Edison of involvement in what happened, but Tesla himself denied this statement.
Wireless signal transmission
During the fire, the first three samples of remotely controlled cars burned down, but Tesla was able to recreate them quite quickly from memory. For a demonstration at the New York Electric Show, he decided to opt for a radio-controlled boat. Unfortunately, the public coldly accepted the novelty. Only the military became interested in it, since they could use it as a means of firing torpedoes at enemy ships, but the high cost of the project immediately discouraged them. The glory of the pioneer in the field of transmission of electrical communications over distances undeservedly went to the inventor Gulelmo Marconi, who at the same exhibition demonstrated mines exploding by radio signal.
In 1900, the Italian planned to patent his discovery in the United States for the transmission of radio signals over a distance, but the patent office refused him, since Tesla had previously received this patent. This did not stop Marconi, and in 1905 he ensured that the patent office canceled the certificates issued by Tesla and gave the palm in this direction to the Italian.
Rumor has it that this happened not without the help of Edison. The truth triumphed only after Tesla's death. In 1943, the US Supreme Court ruled that Nikola Tesla was the first to discover that electrical communication could be carried out without wires. Although in fairness it should be noted that in different countries different scientists are considered the inventor of radio, for example, in Russia - physicist Alexander Popov.
world system
In addition to wireless transmission of communications and radio signals, Tesla was engaged in the study of wireless transmission of energy. He called his project "The World System". To implement it, it was necessary to build 30 resonator towers in different parts of the globe. Radiators mounted on towers would cause vibrations of a certain frequency in the atmosphere, under the towers in the ground there should be oil-filled channels in which vibrations were created using pumps that would be transmitted to the earth. Thus, a closed system was obtained in which it would be possible to send energy and radio communications over long distances. In search of an investor, Nikola Tesla turned to John Morgan, but spoke only about one of the future functions of the World System - the transmission of radio signals across the ocean.
The industrial tycoon agreed, but quickly withdrew funding for the project when, looking at the mighty foundation, he discovered that the tower was primarily intended for something else, and not for transmitting radio signals. Morgan stated that he was deceived. A violent scandal erupted in the press. After that, Tesla failed to find other investors. The inventor invested all his savings in the project, but this amount was not enough to complete what he started. The unfinished tower stood until 1917, after which it was blown up by the authorities, who were afraid of using it for espionage purposes.
Despite the strong mental shock after the failure with the World System, Tesla continued to work actively and patent his inventions. IN last years In his lifetime, he was engaged in the development of bladeless turbines, devices for radio detection of submarines, as well as studying the possibilities of obtaining ultrahigh voltages. Nikola Tesla died in New York on the night of January 7-8, 1943. The urn with the ashes was first installed at a local cemetery in New York, and later transferred to the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade.
