Nikola Tesla
"Were we," remarks B. A. Behrend, distinguished author and engineer, "to seize and to eliminate the results of Mr. Tesla's work, the wheels of industry would cease to turn, our electric cars and trains would stop, our towns would be dark, and our mills would be dead and idle."
Dr. Nikola Tesla (1856-1943)
Dr. Nikola Tesla was born in Croatia, which at that time, lay within Austro-Hungary. Tesla was born "at the stroke of midnight" with lightning striking during a summer storm. He was born in Smijani, near Gospiae, Lika (the Krajina, a military district of Austro-Hungarian Empire, now in Croatia). At the moment of his birth, the midwife commented, "He'll be a child of the storm," to which his mother replier, "No, of light!" Tesla was baptized in the Old Slavonic Church rite. His Baptism Certificate reports that he was born on June 28th, (Julian calendar; July 10 in the Gregorian calendar), and Christened by the Sefb Orthodox priest, Toma Oklobd'ija. It is interesting to note that he was a Serbian, of Valachian descent.
Tesla was proud of his Croatian motherland and Serbian descent. When his mother died in 1892, he paid a visit to Croatian capital Zagreb, and gave a lecture about alternating current. On that occasion Tesla said: "As a son of my homeland, I feel it is my duty to help the city of Zagreb in every respect with my advice and work" - ("Smatram svojom duznoscu da kao rodeni sin svoje zemlje pomognem gradu Zagrebu u svakom pogledu savjetom i cinom"). Nikola Tesla, besides being a great inventor and an outspoken Serbian patriot, had sincerely adored free Serb states, Serbia and Montenegro. He had never hidden his patriotic feelings, on the contrary, he stressed them.
On June 1st 1892, Tesla arrived in Belgrade due to a call for assistance from the Belgrade municipality. Several thousand people were there to greet him at the Belgrade train station. He addressed the gathered crowd, who saluted him:
"There is something within me that might be illusion as it is often case with young delighted people, but if I would be fortunate to achieve some of my ideals, it would be on the behalf of the whole of humanity. If those hopes would become fulfilled, the most exiting thought would be that it is a deed of a Serb. Long live Serbdom!..." Tesla further said to the students of Belgrade University: "As you can see and hear, I have remained a Serb overseas where I have done some researches. You should do so and by your knowledge and hard work you should glorify Serbdom over the world."
One of Tesla's proudest moments was when he was granted his United States citizenship; he never lost his love of his homeland, however.
His monument, carved by Ivan Mestrovic (who knew Tesla personally), can be seen in Zagreb. Another monument, carved by Croatian sculptor Frano Krsinic, can be seen on "Goat Island", near the former Tesla Hydropower Plant on Niagara Falls, in the middle of the Niagara River, between the United States and Canada boarders. It is purposely left un-illuminated at night (for the effect, and, to provoke thought of what the world would be like without Tesla's contributions). As I have personally visited this monument, it leaves one with an eerie feeling. One definitely feels a sense of sadness for Tesla, a man that quite literally created our modern electrical world, now with a simple statue staring out from an island in the middle of nowhere.
This picture to the right (click thumbnail for larger view) is from a visit I recently took to Niagara Falls on the 4th of July, 2005. Standing in front of this statue left me with a feeling of awe. Just a statue, mind you, but, to state at the solumn expression on Tesla's face, and then think of all he accomplished, it is just an amazing feeling. A part of the Technical Museum in Zagreb is dedicated to Nikola Tesla. Even today, so many years after Tesla's death in 1943, his numerous manuscripts are still kept as "top secret" by the US Ministry of Defense (see Margaret Cheney, "Tesla: Man Out of Time", Prentice Hall, 1981). This page, and the following series of pages are my tribute to Nikola Tesla. Tesla GAVE us our modern world. This is simply my way of "paying it forward," in an attempt to give the reader a look at this amazing inventor, scientist, and engineer.
Nikola Tesla, an American inventor and engineer, whose mastery of electricity came at a time when electricity was changing American life. Tesla is the unsung hero and creator of the electric age, and, without whom, our radio, automobile ignition, telephone, alternating current power and transmission system, radio, television, flourescent lighting, none of it would have been possible. He discovered the rotating magnetic field, the basis of most modern alternating current machinery, and holds more than seven hundred patents. His inventions make him one of the most prolific and foremost pioneers in the distribution of electric energy.
Born into a family of Serbian origin, His father was Rev. Milutin Tesla, a priest in the Serb Orthodox Church Metropolitanate of Sremski Karlovci. His mother was Ðuka Mandic, herself a daughter of a Serbian Orthodox priest, who was talented in making home craft tools. His godfather, Jovan Drenovac, was a captain in the army protecting the Military Frontier. Tesla was one of five children, having one brother and three sisters. His one older brother, Dane, died when Nikola was five. In his autobiography (
"My Inventions" ), Tesla tells of the early workings of his mind in a description that we can only regard with amazement. He began seeing flashes of light that interfered with his physical vision. When a word was spoken, he would envision the object so clearly that he had trouble distinguishing between the imagined (spoken) object and the real. In later years, he would build a machine in his mind, run it to see where it was flawed, and make whatever repairs and adjustments were needed, before he ever began his construction. At night and in solitude, Tesla had an inner world of personal vision where he made journeys to distant places, studies, carried on conversations and met people that seemed as real to him as his outer world. By the time he was a teenager he spoke four languages. At about age 17, he found to his delight that he could create things in his mind, picturing them as the finished product without models, drawings or experiments. He invented such things as a low friction finless waterwheel and a motor driven by June bugs. Again from "My Inventions," we learn that Tesla engaged in reading many works, as he stated, "At that age (24), I knew entire books by heart, word for word. One of these was Goethe's Faust." The relevance of this statement and his familiarity with Goethe's Faust will come into play further in this writing.
He trained to be an engineer, attending the Technical University at Graz, Austria and the University of Prague. Beginning his studies in physics and mathematics at Graz Polytechnic, he then took philosophy at the University of Prague. After finishing the studies at the Polytechnic Institute, doing two years of study in one, working 19 hours a day and sleeping only two, he suffered a complete nervous breakdown. During the malady, he observed many phenomena, both strange and unbelievable. His vision and hearing intensified beyond any normal human capacity. He could sense objects in the dark in the same way as a bat. It was a period in which his sensitivities were so heightened that the flashes of light that he had seen from the time he was a youth now filled the air around him with tongues of living flame. Their intensity, instead of diminishing, increased with time, and seemingly attained a maximum when he was about twenty-five years old. His responses were so keenly tuned that a word would become an image that he could feel see and taste. It was during this time that he had one of his most famous ideas; the rotating magnetic field and alternating current induction motor. Bringing himself back to the world as it is, Tesla began work as an electrical engineer with the Central Telegraph Office in Budapest, Hungary in 1881 and the following year, he went to work in Paris for the Continental Edison Company. In 1883 he constructed, after work hours, his first induction motor.
He sailed to America in 1884, arriving with four cents in his pocket. He found immediate employment with Thomas Edison - who quickly became a rival - Edison being an advocate of the inferior DC power transmission system. For the remainder of his life, Tesla would have, at times, difficulty getting his ideas and inventions funded because most financiers were in Edison’s corner. Even later in his life, many of his ideas and inventions could not get funding, and so remained in notebooks, which are still examined to this day, by engineers searching for clues from his brilliant scientific mind. Edison and Tesla parted company within a year due to a false promise made by Edison.
The story went like this; Tesla was told (by Edison) that if he could repair all of the faulty and broken down motors and generators in the Edison plant that he would receive $50,000.00 for his effort. This Tesla did, and in record time, no less. At the completion of the repair work, Tesla approached Edison for the monies that were promised, at which time Edison replied that he was only "joking" about the money. Tesla described the nature of the benefits from his proposed modifications, and reminded Edison that he had worked nearly a year to redesign them and that in doing so, gave the Edison company several enormously profitable new patents in the process. When Tesla inquired again about the $50,000, Edison replied to him, "Tesla, you don't understand our American humor," and reneged on his promise. Edison reportedly offered to raise Tesla's salary by $10 per week as a compromise - at which rate it would have taken almost 100 years to earn the money Edison had originally promised. Tesla resigned on the spot. Tesla did not find it very amusing and left his employ for good.
Perhaps the lowest point in his life was in 1884-85 after he left Edison, and without recognition or a mentor, had to take manual labor to survive. He was digging ditches at $2.00 a day when he met Mr. A. K. Brown of the Western Union Telegraph Company who put up some of his own money and interested a friend in joining him in Tesla's project. Shortly thereafter, Tesla was commissioned with the design of the AC generators installed at Niagara Falls.
Tesla and Edison have often been represented as rivals. They were rivals, to a certain extent, in the battle between the alternating and direct current in which Tesla championed the former. He won; the great power plants at Niagara Falls and elsewhere are founded on the Tesla system. Otherwise the two men were merely opposites. Edison had a genius for practical inventions immediately applicable. Tesla, whose inventions were far ahead of the time, aroused antagonisms which delayed the fruition of his ideas for years. However, great physicists like Kelvin and Crookes spoke of his inventions as marvelous. "Tesla," said Professor A. E. Kennelly, of Harvard University, when the Edison medal was presented to the inventor, "set wheels going round all over the world. . . . What he showed was a revelation to science and art unto all time."
In April 1887, he established his own laboratory, where he experimented with shadowgraphs similar to those involved in the discovery of x-rays.
In 1888 his discovery that a magnetic field could be made to rotate if two coils at right angles are supplied with AC current 90 degrees out of phase made possible the invention of the AC induction motor. The major advantage of this motor being its brushless operation, which many at the time was believed impossible.
By 1890, Tesla was a young, striking and desirable bachelor. Handsome, magnetic and elegant, he was the "catch" of New York society, yet remained unmarried and a misanthrope. He was wealthy, gifted, accomplished and recognized. He wore his clothes well and was quiet and modest. Many a designing matron with a marriageable daughter was eager to capture him for her salon. Social leaders and businessmen considered him a good contact and the intellectuals of his day found him an inspiration. However, Tesla proved to be impervious, an unattainable prize. Except at formal dinners he always dined alone, and never under any circumstances would he dine with a woman at a twosome dinner. At the Waldorf-Astoria and at the famous Delmonico's restaurant, he had picked out particular discrete tables, which were always reserved for him. In spite of all of the adulation that was heaped upon him, Tesla had but one desire – to continue his work. He lived the life of a celibate and a hermit. He enjoyed poetry and the opera and though he was not a drinker, he appreciated a glass of beer and advocated the limited consumption of liquor as an elixir of life.
To backtrack in time, slightly, in May 1885, George Westinghouse purchased the patents to his induction motor, his polyphase system of alternating-current dynamos, transformers and motors and made this the basis of the Westinghouse power system which still underlies the modern electrical power industry today. When Westinghouse found that they could not stay in business if they paid him his due of Twelve Million Dollars, Tesla tore up the contract. Tesla did this, quite simply, so people could have the benefit of financially attainable electricity. Tesla made his first million before he was 40, but gave up the royalties on his most profitable invention as a humanitarian gesture. As a result, Westinghouse remained in business (this action allowed Westinghouse and Tesla to complete their exhibit at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, and electrify the entire exhibit area with AC power, built, designed, and installed by Tesla - a feat remarkable, even by today's standards considering the time frame allowed). This also prevented Tesla from becoming what would have at that time been - the world's first billionaire. Yes, Tesla's contracts with Westinghouse were of that much value. The true wealth that Tesla gave up that day, upon tearing up of those contracts, cannot be underestimated, nor valued appropriately - to say several hundreds of billions of dollars would still be an understatement.
The World's Fair Exposition cannot be emphasized enough in what it accomplished for Tesla, and for the use of Alternating Current Electricity. At the 1893 World's Fair, the World Columbian Exposition, in Chicago, Illinois, celebrating the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' first voyage to America, an international exposition was held, in which, for the first time, a building was devoted to electrical exhibits. It was a historic event and the beginning of a revolution as Tesla and Westinghouse introduced visitors to AC power by providing AC energy to illuminate the World Columbian Exposition. The public at large observed firsthand the qualities and abilities of AC power. All the exhibits were from commercial enterprises. Edison, Brush, Western Electric, and Westinghouse all had exhibits. General Electric Company (backed by Edison and J.P. Morgan) proposed to power the electric fair with direct current at the cost of one million dollars.
Westinghouse proposed, armed with Tesla's AC system, to illuminate the exposition for half as much. Tesla's high-frequency high-voltage lighting produced more efficient light with less heat. A two-phase induction motor was driven by current from the main generators to power the system. Edison tried to prevent the use of his light bulbs with Tesla's system. GE banned the use of Edison's lamps in Westinghouse's exhibits. Still, Westinghouse's proposal was chosen over the inferior DC system to power the fair. Westinghouse displayed several polyphase systems. The exhibits included a switchboard, polyphase generators, step-up and step-down transformers, transmission line, commercial size induction motors, commercial size synchronous motors, and rotary direct current converters (one of which was operating a railway motor). The working-scale system allowed the public a view of a system of polyphase power which could transmit long distances. Meters and other auxiliary devices were also present.
Tesla displayed the first neon light tubes at the exposition, demonstrating his phosphorescent lighting powered without wires by high-frequency fields. Tesla's lighting inventions exposed to high-frequency currents would bring the gases to incandescence. Tesla displayed the first practical phosphorescent lamps (a precursor to fluorescent lamps). His innovations in this type of light emission were not regularly patented. Also in the exhibits were Tesla's demonstrations, most notably the "Egg of Columbus". This device explains the principles of the rotating magnetic field and his induction motor. The Egg consisted of a polyphase field coil underneath a plate with a copper egg positioned over the top. When the sequence of the coils were energized, the magnetic field arrangement inductively created a rotation on the egg and made it stand up on end (appearing to resist gravity).
On August 25, 1893, Elisha Gray introduced Tesla for the delivery of a lecture on mechanical and electrical oscillators. Tesla explained his work for efficiently increasing the work at high frequency of reciprocation. As Electrical Congress members listened, Tesla delineated mechanisms which could produce oscillations of constant periods irrespective of the pressure applied and irrespective of frictional losses and loads. He explained the working means of producing constant period electric currents (not resorting to spark gaps or breaks) and how to produce these with reliable mechanisms. The Exposition's illumination with electricity using Tesla's and Westinghouse's alternate current removed any doubt of the utility of the polyphase alternating current.
In his work with the rotary magnetic fields, Tesla devised the system for transmission of power over long distances. He partnered with George Westinghouse to commercialize this system. Experts announced proposals to harness the Niagara Falls for generating electricity. Against General Electric and Edison's proposal, Tesla's AC system won the international Niagara Falls Commission contract. The commission was led by Lord Kelvin and backed by entrepreneurs (such as J.P. Morgan, Lord Rothschild, and John Jacob Astor). Work began in 1893 on the Niagara Falls generation project and Tesla's technology was applied to generate electromagnetic energy from the falls. Most doubted that the system would generate enough electricity to power industry in Buffalo. Tesla was sure it would work, saying that Niagara Falls had the ability to power the entire eastern coast of the United States. On November 16, 1896, the first transmission of electrical power between two cities was sent from Niagara Falls to industries in Buffalo from the first commercial two-phase power plants (known as hydroelectric generators) at the Edward Dean Adams Station.
The hydroelectric generators were built by Westinghouse Electric Corporation from Tesla's AC system patent designs. Tesla's system designs alleviated the limitations of the previous DC methods. The nameplates on the generators bear Tesla's name. He also set the 60 hertz standard for North America. It took five years to complete the whole facility. With the financial backing of George Westinghouse, Tesla's AC replaced DC, enormously extending the range and improving the safety and efficiency of power distribution. Tesla's Niagara Falls system marked the end of Edison's roadmap for electrical transmission. Eventually, Edison's GE company converted to the AC system. Tesla's contributions to the modern world are widely regarded as more important and long-lasting, by some, than those of his nemesis and one-time employer, Thomas Edison.
In 1915 he was severely disappointed when a report that he and Edison were to share the Nobel Prize proved erroneous. Tesla was the recipient of the Edison Medal in 1917, the highest honor that the American Institute of Electrical Engineers could bestow. When others claimed credit for the revolutionary ideas that came from his extraordinary mind, he did not contest them.
Impractical in financial matters, eccentric and compulsive, Tesla had few friends, but those included Mark Twain,
John J. O’Neill and Francis Marion Crawford. He never married, and cited on at least one occasion that marriage wasn’t good for inventors. He was driven by compulsions and had a progressive germ phobia, washing his hands frequently and avoiding shaking hands and measuring the volume of his food before he ate it. He liked a fresh tablecloth with every meal. Always a fastidious dresser, Tesla wore new gloves weekly and a new tie daily. He maintained the same weight through his lifetime, 142 pounds, and always slept only four hours per night; lying down resting a total of six hours, but sleeping no more than four.
Famous writer/author Samuel Clemens (under the pseudonym Mark Twain) often visited Tesla’s laboratory at night. Tesla was very close to him and after Twain’s death he spoke about him as if he were alive. Mark Twain and Nikola Tesla were so close, one could easily write an entire book just about their close friendship, alone. Twain was fascinated by the enigmatic Tesla. I think Tesla simply enjoyed Twain's wry candor and wit. The writer Mark Twain died in 1910, and his enigmatic novel "Mysterious pilgrim" was published six years later. In this novel, he told about an angel who left the heavens and came to Earth to a small Austrian village. There he met a group of boys and told them the secrets of the universe. If we recognize the little Austrian village as Smilyany and the figure of the Angel as Tesla, then an explanation of a very strange theory on human destiny and cosmology will appear. This theory, expressed in this short story, made it different from other stories of this writer (Mark Twain). The Angel tells about the source of all people’s troubles and misfortunes. It all comes from misunderstanding the true sense of each minuscule events. Each of these events defines the future and links the next series of events. As he considered it, people’s free will is an illusion, since all is predetermined and will come to a predictable result. This entirely coincides with Tesla’s idea of a man as an “automaton of cosmic forces” and it is brought out clearly by simple dramaturgic tools used by the brilliant writer, Marc Twain. Finally, before Angel left his friends, he let them in on the last magic secret, which would be terrible for them to know, i.e. secret of Non-Existence. He said that all is only a thought. There is nothing existent..."I am only a thought, a lonely thought, which travels along the empty space of the Universe." It makes one seriously wonder if Twain's highly acute writer instincts and his book were not based on his good friend, Nikola Tesla, after all. One can only guess, but I personally think the book was written based on Tesla. Clemens and Tesla...can you just imagine the conversations these two men must have had together?!
The Inventions
Nikola Tesla believed that alternating current was vastly superior to (Edison's) direct current, but, the problem was the lack of a practical motor. Alternating current is practical because of the fact that it can be altered, or converted, to suit a variety of situations. For example, if the voltage is made quite high, then the current necessary for a specific level of power is very low. This low current then becomes very efficient when sending electrical power over very long wires. This is the reason why the power lines running across the countryside are of very high voltages. Tesla also worked with radio-frequency electromagnetic waves, and, despite the claims made by Marconi, actially DID invent the idea of Radio as we know it today. There are numerous patents which bear this out. Even today, many texts STILL credit Marconi with the invention of radio, despite the Supreme Court of the United States decision which oeverruled the Marconi patens, awarding it to Tesla! Unforrtunately, the decision came two years after Tesla's own death. In working with radio waves, Tesla created the Tesla Coil, as a means to generate and receive this form of energy. Every time you start our car,the device that provides the spark to the spark plug is a unit either wholy, or in part, a Tesla Coil.
Tesla postulated the ability to locate objects in the air or in the ground by using radio waves. Today, we call it "RADAR", and when used to peer into the human body, "MRI". Tesla also created radio controlled devices., or "Teli-autonomotons". His work with special gas filled lamps set the stage for the creation of fluorescent lighting, and neon lights.
Tesla patented dozens of devices ranging from speedometers to extremely efficient electrical generators. One unique device was his
Tesla Turbine or
bladeless boundary disk turbine .
Instead of using fan-type blades, Tesla's turbine utilized solid disks of metal, and relied on what is called the "boundary layer effect". His turbine ran on either compressed air or steam or gasoline explosions, and was so efficient that a device held in the hand could produce well over 10 horsepower!
One of the largest turbines that Tesla designed pumped out 10,000 Horse-power, and was about one fifth the size and weight of the engines of its day. Today, this bladeless technology is being used in a special type of non-clogging pump designed for the oil industry.
The turbine is awaiting commercial use, and public acceptance., but developments are rapidly making it again seem attractive. Frank Germano, Guy Letourneau, Tad Johnson and Martin Dorantes, of International Turbine And Power, of Cody Wyoming, USA, pioneered the design of a special Tesla-Type turbine for the commercial power markets as recently as 1999.
This turbine can be run on any combustible fuel (propane, methane, gasoline, diesel, hydrogen), steam, or even water under pressure. Currently, in 2006, a newer, far more efficient engine has been design by Germano (with the new company - Global Energy Technologies, Inc.) based almost entirely on Tesla original bladeless disk turbine, and incorporating several advantageous features of implosion, and frequency/harmonic modulation pioneered by another contemporary inventor -
Viktor Schauberger .
It has been said that Tesla is the "Forgotten Father of Technology." It
is hard to believe that a man who gave the world so much, received so little for his efforts. History books have been equally unkind.
In many parts of this country, people still refer to the electric utility as the 'Edison Company', even though they use the Tesla-Westinghouse alternating current system, not Edison's direct current. At the Niagara Falls power generating station, a small statue of Tesla is purposely left un-illuminated at night. I have visited this statue, and it is a quite stunning statement to witness the statue in complete darkness, with the surrounding area ablaze with lighting supplied from Tesla's own inventions.
Tesla also had a deep desire to provide wireless electricity across the globe. First, there was the patent infringement issue, which made millionaires of others, particularly the Marconi Company. But Tesla maintained a single-minded focus on developing global wireless communications and energy systems. Working in Colorado Springs in 1899, Tesla developed a transmitter to perfect a method by which transmitted energy could be channeled through natural media. In Colorado Springs, Colorado, Tesla built a laboratory to develop this. The Colorado Springs lab contained the largest Tesla Coil ever built. Called the Magnifying Transmitter , it was capable of generating some 300,000 watts of power, and could produce a bolt of lightning over 130 feet long. According to local accounts, Tesla actually managed to successfully transmit about 30 to 50 thousand watts of power, without wires, using the Transmitter. There are detailed accounts of these feats, below.
Two years later, 1901, working on Long Island at Wardenclyffe, he set to work on his ultimate goal: construction of a "world telegraphy center" that was to have a lab, a wireless transmitter and production facilities for manufacturing oscillators and vacuum tubes. Constructed on the "model city's" 1,800 acres would be homes, stores and buildings to accommodate 2,500 workers... at least, that was the dream. By that year's end, however, Marconi had usurped the inventor by transmitting an overseas signal. That left Tesla at the mercy of his financier, J.P. Morgan, who literally pulled the plug on his vision. Morgan, at the time the prime force behind General Electric Co., may have been unnerved by Tesla's claims that the technology could transmit "unlimited power" by wireless means. The word "free" did not translate well to Morgan. Again, the money flow came to a halt.
Some Tesla devotees suspect he may have been a pioneer of the transistor. "Inventors of the modern computer have repeatedly been surprised, when seeking patents, to encounter Tesla's basic ones already on file," noted Tesla historian Leland Anderson, a former EE and a board member of the Wardenclyffe project. Indeed, two of Tesla's patents from 1903 contain the basic principles of the logical "AND" circuit element. Tesla went on to experiment with actual wireless transmission of electrical power.
Despite his accomplishments, by 1915, at age 60, Tesla was living on credit and drifting from one cheap hotel another, a victim of his own poor business decisions, underdeveloped ideas and inability to create another innovation as profound as the AC paradigm. In 1931, at the age of 75, Tesla received birthday greetings from Lee de Forest and Albert Einstein. In his later years he spent most of his time at the New York Public Library or feeding pigeons that he called- “my sincere friends".
Concerning Albert Einstein's relativity theory, Tesla stated that '...the relativity theory, by the way, is much older than its present proponents. It was advanced over 200 years ago by my illustrious countryman Boskovic, the great philospher, who, not withstanding other and multifold obligations, wrote a thousand volumes of excellent literature on a vast variety of subjects. Boskovic dealt with relativity, including the so-called time-space continuum...', (1936 unpublished interview, quoted in Anderson, L, ed. Nikola Tesla: Lecture Before the New York Academy of Sciences: The Streams of Lenard and Roentgen and Novel Apparatus for Their Production, April 6, 1897, reconstructed 1994).
When he was eighty-one, Tesla stated he had completed a dynamic theory of gravity. He stated that it was "worked out in all details" and hoped to give to the world the theory soon. The theory was, unfortunately, never published. At the time of his announcement, it was considered by the scientific establishment to exceed the bounds of reason. While Tesla had "worked out a dynamic theory of gravity" that he soon hoped to give to the world, he died before he publicized any details. Few details were revealed by Tesla about his theory in the announcement. Tesla's critique in the announcement was the opening clash between him and modern experimental physics. Tesla may have viewed his principles in such a manner as to not be in conflict with other modern theories (besides Einstein's).
The bulk of the theory was developed between 1892 and 1894, during the period that he was conducting experiments with high frequency and high potential electromagnetism and patenting devices for their utilization. It was completed, according to Tesla, by the end of the 1930s. Tesla's theory explained gravity using electrodynamics consisting of transverse waves (to a lesser extent) and longitudinal waves (for the majority). Tesla stated in 1925 that,
"There is no thing endowed with life - from man, who is enslaving the elements, to the nimblest creature - in all this world that does not sway in it's turn. Whenever action is born from force, though it be infinitesimal, the cosmic balance is upset and the universal motion results."
Tesla was critical of Einstein's (theory of) relativity work,
...[a] magnificent mathematical garb which fascinates, dazzles and makes people blind to the underlying errors. The theory is like a beggar clothed in purple whom ignorant people take for a king...., its exponents are brilliant men but they are metaphysicists rather than scientists... (New York Times, July 11, 1935, p23, c.8).
Tesla also stated that:"I hold that space cannot be curved, for the simple reason that it can have no properties. It might as well be said that God has properties. He has not, but only attributes and these are of our own making. Of properties we can only speak when dealing with matter filling the space. To say that in the presence of large bodies space becomes curved is equivalent to stating that something can act upon nothing. I, for one, refuse to subscribe to such a view." (New York Hearald Tribune, September 11, 1932)
By 1943, he had begun suffering heart trouble and fainting spells along with some mental confusion. On January 1st, 1943 he complained of chest pains during an experiment and returned to the hotel room where he lived. The last person to see him alive was a hotel maid on January 5th, 1943. It is assumed that he died January 7th, 1943 in New York City and his body was discovered on the following day. Over 2,000 people attended his funeral in Manhattan. So, at age 86, the great inventor died alone, nearly penniless and all but forgotten. Years earlier, however, Tesla had appeared to predict the posthumous recognition that today's scientific community would afford him when he wrote: "Let the future tell the truth, and evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments." And what accomplishments they were, Dr. Tesla. The world would be a very dark place, without you. For more startling insight into Dr. Tesla's amazing accomplishments, see the companion article: Nikola Tesla And His Work With Alternating Currents. Continue with the pages in series by clicking on the "next" link, below.
I am now going to concentrate on Tesla and his Magnifying Transmitter in all of its historical relevance.
"The present is theirs ; the future, for which I really work , is mine." Nikola Tesla
Next
Tesla's Magnifying Transmitter!
PAGE TWO
"If ever we can ascertain at what period the earth's charge,
when disturbed, oscillates -
we shall know a fact, possibly of the greatest importance to the welfare of the human race."
; Nikola Tesla, 1893
Nikola Tesla Content On This Site:
[
The Complete Nikola Tesla ][
Tesla's Chronography ]
[
Tesla's "Magnifying Transmitter" ][
The Wireless Transmission of Electrical Energy ]
[
Telsa Coils and the ''World System of Power" ][
''The World System of Power'' ]
[
Transmission of Electrical Energy without Wires ][
Tesla's Earthquake Machine ][
Radiant Energy System ]
[Famous
Tesla Quotes ][
Researching A Shockwave Tesla Turbine ][
A Thermo-Pneumatic Tesla Locomotive ][
Tesla's Turbine ]
Two great articles in which Tesla predicts an eerie future:
[
A Machine To End War ] and [
The Wonder World To Be Created By Electricity ]
[
Home ][
Site Index ][
Nikola Tesla ][
Viktor Schauberger ][
Walter Russell ][
Sympathetic Vibratory Physics ]
