Tesla - famous American inventor and physicist
Nikola Tesla (Serbian: Никола Тесла; July 10, 1856 - January 1943 July 7), a Serbian-American inventor, physicist, mechanical engineer, electrical engineer and futurist. He is considered an important promoter of the commercialization of electricity and is best known for designing the modern AC power system. . Based on the electromagnetic field theory discovered by Michael Faraday, Tesla made many revolutionary inventions in the field of electromagnetic fields. His multiple related patents and theoretical research work on electromagnetics are the cornerstone of modern wireless communications and radio. Tesla died on January 7, 1943. Apart from his achievements in electromagnetics, he is also considered to have contributed to various fields such as robotics, ballistics, information science, and nuclear physics.
Basic information Personal profile
Name:
Nikola Tesla
Foreign name:
NikolaTesla
Nationality:
Croatian *** (later immigrated to the United States)
Ethnicity:
Serbia
Place of birth:
Smiljan, Croatia (former Kingdom of Yugoslavia)
Date of birth:
July 10, 1856
Date of death:
January 7, 1943
Personal background
Occupation:
Inventor, physicist
Graduation institution:
Graz University of Technology
Religious belief:
Serbian Orthodoxy
Other information
Other achievements:
Father of alternating current and radio, long-distance power transmission technology alternating current, Tesla coil, particle beam weapon Tesla turbine engine, asynchronous motor rotating magnetic field, ground fixed wave, Bi-wire coil radio technology, wireless transmission of electric energy technology
Character profile
On July 10, 1856, Nikola Tesla was born to a Serb in the village of Smiwan, Croatia. Family, both parents are Serbian, he is the fourth of five children
Nikola Tesla’s father is a pastor in a church, and he grew up in a Christian family since he was a child. big. After graduating from the University of Prague in 1880, he immigrated to the United States in 1884 and became a U.S. citizen. He received honorary doctorates from Yale University and Columbia University.
He made countless inventions in his life: In 1882, shortly after Edison invented direct current (DC), he invented alternating current (AC) and created the world's first AC generator. Initiated multi-phase power transmission technology. In 1895, he manufactured generator sets for the Nicaragua Power Station in the United States, which is still one of the world's famous hydropower stations. In 1897, he made Marconi's wireless communication theory a reality. In 1898, he invented and patented radio remote control technology (U.S. Patent No. #613.809). In 1899, he discovered X-ray (X-Ray) photography technology. Other inventions include: radio, radar, fax machine, vacuum tube, neon light tube, etc. Even the unit of magnetic field density (1 Tesla = 10,000 Gause) named after him shows his contribution to magnetism.
Life experience
Birth of a genius
Tesla was born into a Serbian family in a village called Smilian. This village is located near Gospic, Lika District, in the Austrian Empire (now the Republic of Croatia). His baptismal record proves that he was born on June 28, 1856 (July 10 in the Gregorian calendar). His father's name is Rev. Milutin Tesla, a priest in the Serbian Orthodox Church in the Sremski Karlovci Diocese. His mother's name is ?uka, the daughter of a Serbian Orthodox priest and she is very good at making household hand tools. She could memorize many Serbian epic poems, but she never learned to read. His godfather, Jovan Drenovac, was an army captain who defended the military frontier.
Tesla was one of five children, with a brother (Dane, who died in a riding accident when Nikolai was five years old) and three sisters. In 1862 his family moved to Gospici.
Student days
Tesla went to school in Karlovac, Croatia, and studied electrical engineering at the Technical University of Graz in Austria in 1875. At least two sources indicate that he received his bachelor's degree from the University of Graz. However, his school claimed that he never received a degree and that he only attended the first semester of his freshman year and stopped attending classes during that period. Others said he was forced to drop out because he couldn't afford his first semester's tuition. According to his college roommate, Tesla never graduated. In 1878, he left Graz and severed all ties with his family. He went to Maribor, Slovenia, where he was first employed as an assistant engineer for a year. During this period he suffered from neurasthenia. His father had been urging him to return to the Charles Ferdinand University branch of the University in Prague, so he went there to study for the summer semester in 1880. However, after his father died, he left the university after only one semester.
Engineer of the Edison Company
In 1882, he went to Paris, France, to work as an engineer for the Edison Company, designing and improving electrical appliances. In the same year, Tesla invented the induction motor and began to develop various devices using rotating magnetic fields (patented in 1888).
Soon after, Tesla hurriedly left Paris when he learned that his mother was critically ill. His mother died a few hours after arriving in April 1882. Her last words before her death were: "At last you are here, Nikolai, my pride." When she died, Tesla fell ill. He spent two or three weeks recuperating in Chats and Gospi?, his mother's birthplace.
Leaving Edison
In 1884, Tesla set foot on the United States for the first time and came to New York. He had almost nothing except a letter of recommendation from his former employer, Charles Batchelor. This letter was written to Thomas Edison, and the letter mentioned: "I know two great men, you are one of them, and the other is this young man." Edison hired Tesla and arranged for him to Worked at Edison Machine Company. Tesla began to design simple electrical appliances for Edison. He made rapid progress and soon solved some of the company's very difficult problems. Tesla was solely responsible for the redesign of Edison's DC motor.
In 1919, Tesla wrote: "If he completes the improvement of the motor and generator, Edison will offer him a staggering $50,000 (the equivalent of today's (2006) inflation-adjusted million dollars per year)”. Tesla said his work lasted nearly a year and resulted in nearly a complete redesign of the generator, allowing Edison to reap huge profits and new patent rights. When Tesla asked Edison for $50,000, Edison reportedly replied: "Tesla, you don't understand our American humor," thereby breaking his promise. The amount of this bonus was equivalent to the company's founding capital, and with Tesla's salary of $18 per week at the time, he would have to work for 53 years to earn it. He resigned after Tesla's request for a raise to $25 a week was rejected.
Tesla finally discovered that he was just selling his physical strength in Edison's company, but during this time, he began to focus on the design of alternating current systems.
A scientist with fruitful achievements
In 1886, Tesla founded his own company, Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing. Investors disagreed with Tesla's plans for an alternator and eventually ousted him from his position. From 1886 to 1887, Tesla worked as an ordinary laborer in New York, both to make ends meet and to accumulate funds for his next engineering project. In 1887, he assembled the earliest brushless alternating current induction motor and demonstrated it to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 1888.
That same year (1888) he developed the principles of the Tesla coil and began working with George Westinghouse in the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company's laboratories in Pittsburgh. Westinghouse listened to his idea of ??using a polyphase system to transmit alternating current over long distances.
In his early research,
Tesla formulated many experiments to generate X-rays. Tesla believed that using his circuit, "My instrument can produce X-rays with much greater energy than ordinary instruments can produce."
He also talked about using his Hazards during operation of circuits and single-node X-ray generating equipment. In his many accounts investigating this phenomenon, he attributed many causes of skin lesions. He believes that early skin damage is not caused by X-rays, but is caused by the production of ozone in contact with the skin and contact with some nitrous acid. Tesla mistakenly believed that X-rays were longitudinal waves.
Tesla completed some experiments before Roentgen confirmed his findings (including taking X-rays of his hands, which he later sent to Roentgen), but did not make his findings known , most of his research materials were destroyed in a laboratory fire on Fifth Avenue in March 1895.
Tesla's generator was improved by Tesla in 1895, taking into account liquid air. Tesla knew, based on the discoveries of William Thomson (Kelvin), that liquid air absorbs more heat when it reliquefies and can be used to drive things than theoretically produced.
Tesla demonstrated wireless energy transmission as early as 1891. The Tesla Effect (in honor of Tesla) is the term used to describe this type of conductive application (i.e. energy traveling through space and the motion of an object is not just like an electric current passing through a conductor).
In 1889, Tesla decided to move to Colorado Springs, Colorado, where he had a place to conduct high-frequency and high-voltage experiments, and began research there. Shortly after arriving, he told French reporters that he was experimenting with wireless transmission of signals from Pikes Peak (a nearby mountain) to Paris. Tesla's diary contains experimental descriptions of his experiments related to the ionosphere and underground geocurrents propagating through longitudinal or transverse waves. In the laboratory, Tesla proved that the earth is an electrical conductor and created artificial lightning (the discharge of electricity was millions of volts, and the longest one was 135 feet long). Tesla also studied atmospheric electricity, observing lightning signals he received using a receiver. It can be seen from the replica that Tesla's receiver and metal detector circuits have unexpected complexity (such as decentralized high-Q spiral oscillator tubes, radio wave feedback, original heterodyne effect and regeneration techniques).
Tesla claimed that he observed standing waves at this time. In a Colorado laboratory, he "recorded" what he believed to be radio waves from outer space, but his claims and data were rejected by the scientific community. He mentioned that there were repeated signals in the data from his receiver, which were essentially different from the signals obtained from the lightning and soil disturbances he had already mentioned. He later reiterated more explicitly that the signals appeared in groups of one, two, three and four. Tesla spent the rest of his life trying to send messages to Mars. In 1996, Coram published an analysis of plasma toroidal surface signals on Jupiter, which pointed out that the Martian subsidence in Colorado was consistent with the signal cessation of Jupiter in the summer of 1889 when Tesla was still there.
Tesla’s later years
In 1900, Tesla took $150,000 (51% from J.P. Morgan) to start planning Waldencliff Tower. In July 1902, Tesla's studies were moved from Houston Street to Waldencliff Tower. The tower was eventually demolished and scrapped during World War I. Newspapers of the time called Waldencliff Tower "Tesla's million-dollar building." In 1904, the U.S. Patent Office revoked the original decision and granted Guglielmo Marconi the radio patent. After that, Tesla began his battle for the radio patent. In 1906, on his 50th birthday, Tesla demonstrated his 200-horsepower (approximately 150 kilowatts) bladeless turbine that ran at 1,500 rpm.
Between 1900 and 1911, at the Waterside Power Station in New York, some of his bladeless turbine engines were tested to 100-5000 horsepower (equivalent to 73.5-3675kW).
The great man passed away
In 1943, Nikola Tesla passed away at the age of 87. Never married.
Honorary record? About the Nobel Prize
In the thirty years since its inception, Nikola Tesla has been selected nine times for the Nobel Prize in Physics. , twice with Edison, and he gave up all the eleven Nobel Prizes. The reason why he refused to have sex with Edison in 1912 was learned from his good friend Mark Twain: "How can you have sex with one wife, especially with a liar and a habitual thief?" Isn’t it dangerous?” Although Edison later used various channels to compete for the Nobel Prize with General Electric every year, he was always rejected comprehensively and never won the Nobel Prize in his life.
Throughout the history of Nobel Prizes, 27% of scientists who were inspired to win the Nobel Prize in Physics by studying the works of Nikola Tesla accounted for more than 65% of those who were indirectly inspired. %. For example, Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen, who helped him prove the hazards of X-rays, immediately became the winner of the first Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901.
Nikola Tesla also recommended Maria Sklodowska Curie’s achievements in radioactive elements in 1910, which also helped Marie Curie win her second Nobel Prize. , and this time she avoided the physics award and won the chemistry award. At that time, the chemistry award had higher achievements than the physics award, and she was a woman, which was of extraordinary significance to all mankind.
So although Nikola Tesla never accepted a Nobel Prize, on his 75th birthday in 1931, he received letters of thanks from eight Nobel Prize winners in physics. At his funeral in 1943, three Nobel Prize winners in physics delivered speeches on behalf of the Nobel team.
About Fortune
Nikola Tesla independently developed and patented 700 types of products throughout his life, and collaborated on more than 1,000 types of developments, with countless people helping him develop them. But not a penny was put into his pocket.
Nikola Tesla was a completely enlightened wise man. He understood Edison’s money-making principles, but never imitated them. In his later years, he could not stand the daily threats from the consortium, so he resolutely tore up the "alternating current patent" and made it a free resource forever. If the patent for the invention of alternating current is not given to all mankind for free use, each horsepower of alternating current will bring him a "royalty fee" of US$2.53. Within a year, his cash will exceed that of the world's richest man. His lifetime patents and the money brought by his scientific and technological achievements, except for equipment or living expenses, were all donated to poor governments around the world to take care of the people. In other words, he insisted on equal wealth for everyone and a harmonious world.
Despite being impoverished in his later years, Nikola Tesla refused the U.S. government’s offer to stay and returned to Yugoslavia to spend his remaining years. Soon after, the U.S. government used its national power to allocate astronomical sums of money to provide economic support to Yugoslavia and other countries, so that Nikola Tesla could live in the United States. Nikola Tesla's face is still printed on banknotes in Yugoslavia and Serbia.
Character Achievements
In the United States, Tesla’s reputation in history or popular culture is comparable to that of any other inventor or scientist. After he demonstrated wireless communication in 1893 and became the winner of the Battle of the Electric Currents, he became highly respected as one of America's greatest electrical engineers. Many of his early results became precursors to modern electronic engineering, and many of his discoveries were groundbreaking and important. In 1943, the U.S. Supreme Court recognized him as the inventor of radio.
In his later years, Tesla was regarded as a mad scientist and was noted for his claims to create bizarre scientific inventions. Many of his achievements have been used with some controversy to support many pseudosciences, such as Uvu theory and New Age occult theories. Tesla's contemporary admirers regard him as "the man who created the twentieth century." He is a great man forgotten by the world. He invented the alternator, and Edison loved the DC generator he invented, so he and some companies tried their best to suppress Tesla.
If Tesla hadn't been forced to give up his patent on alternating current for free use by the world ($2.53 per horsepower), he would have been the richest man in the world. His dream is to provide the world with inexhaustible energy. Tesla never cared about his financial situation and died poor and forgotten at the age of 86. Although he was a genius, it is a pity that not many people remember him.
Tesla has contributed to various fields such as robotics, ballistics, information science, nuclear physics and theoretical physics. In addition to the above, he himself has special powers, and is also related to weird inventions such as super powers, flying saucers, and particle beam weapons. Even the Tunguska explosion was suspected to be related to him. But after Tesla's death was made public, the government-affiliated Bureau of Foreign Assets Supervision and Administration still obtained his research materials and patents. At the time of his death, Tesla continued his research on teleforce weapons and death rays. Although he was unsuccessful in selling these weapons to the U.S. War Department. His proposed death ray appears to be related to his work on ball lightning and plasma, and is believed to be a particle beam weapon. The U.S. government found no safe prototype device. After the War Department contacted the FBI, his research was declared top secret. On the advice of presidential advisors, all of his personal belongings were seized; John Edgar Hoover declared all of Tesla's research top secret due to the nature of Tesla's inventions and patents.
After Tesla invented the "alternating current generator", he began to study the feasibility of "free energy".
In 1889, he built a laboratory in Colorado Springs, USA, and concentrated on studying the principles and reactions of the "Tesla coil". In 1895, when his invention career was at its peak, a bizarre fire burned down the entire laboratory. Half of his life's research efforts, all precious research equipment and scientific experiment materials were burned. Sri Lanka's economy suffered serious losses. Under this cruel blow, he was at a loss.
After a long period of silence and recovery, in 1901, he came back from the pain and looked for partners. As a result, he received an investment of US$150,000 and 100,000 US dollars from the world's richest man J.P. Morgan (J.Pierpont Morgan). Another US$1 million loan was used to build the first large-scale "Tesla coil" in Long Island in the United States to provide "wireless communication" and "wireless power transmission" on both sides of the Atlantic. This world broadcasting system was named "Wardendyffe Project".
The invention of alternating current
In 1888, many newspapers at the time reported that the famous inventor Thomas Edison claimed that Nikola Tesla was a leader in the scientific community. A big "heresy", the alternating current (AC) he invented
directly affects human life safety
and has repeatedly shown how dogs and cats die instantly after passing through AC (the "electric chair" is also the death penalty So I was inspired - it is said that in order to combat alternating current, Edison bribed some state government officials in the United States to change the local death penalty from hanging to alternating current electrocution. However, alternating current did not kill anyone, but electrocuted the prisoners half to death).
But in fact, today everyone knows how much the world needs alternating current. The invention of alternating current improved people's lives, enhanced industrial development and accelerated scientific progress. But why did Edison repeatedly attack alternating current and its inventor, Tesla? The answer is that the emergence of alternating current directly threatened Edison's direct current business. Because there are too many shortcomings and limitations in using direct current. For example, DC power is not conducive to long-distance transmission, and power stations must be added every 1 kilometer, but AC power can be transformed by transformers for long-distance transmission. Using DC power is more expensive, and its efficiency is far less than that of AC power. Based on conflicts of interest, Edison tried his best to suppress Tesla's invention.
Prior to this, Tesla invented 24 new products for the great scientist Edison, including a series of redesigns of DC generators and DC motors, which were patented by Edison and mass-produced. Edison also made a lot of money from it, but Edison refused to give Tesla the promised bonuses, not even a salary increase, and said it was "American humor." As a result, Tesla became angry and broke away from Edison and his company.
This was the prelude to the historic War of Currents.
In 1888,
Tesla received the support of George Westinghouse, an entrepreneur from Westing House, to develop the alternating current that had been conceived for 6 years. system. Half a year later, the AC generator he developed was patented, and he was invited by the American Institute of Electrical Engineers to explain and demonstrate the research results of the AC system. Because the efficiency of alternating current is far superior to that of direct current, alternating current began to be widely used and gradually replaced the traditional direct current. Driven by profit, Edison vigorously criticized Tesla and branded him a "scientific heretic", and a scientific persecution began. Although alternating current has become the mainstream of industrial and social power supply and a necessity in our daily lives, the name of Nikola Tesla has always been forgotten, and has not even received due justice. This is the masterpiece of "orthodox" science.
Niagara Hydropower Station
If you have ever been to Niagara Falls (Niagara Falls) in the United States, I believe everyone will sincerely admire this magnificent spectacle. Tens of thousands of tons of river water converged from all directions, pouring down with the force of landslides and ground cracks. The rumbling sound of the sudden impact of the river water was terrifying. This ever-flowing river contains unexpectedly rich resources.
In 1897, the world-famous Niagara Hydropower Station, the first 100,000-horsepower power station was built, becoming the main source of power supply for The City of Buffalo, New York, 35 kilometers away. Since then, more than a dozen large and small power stations have been built one after another, and the electricity produced every day is enough to supply a quarter of the total demand of New York State in the United States and Ontario, Canada. To this day, this power construction, which was built over 100 years ago, is still operating as usual and has never stopped producing natural energy. It can be said to be a miracle in the scientific history of mankind in the past century.
This century-old miracle in science is a design created by the genius scientist Tesla when he was in his thirties. It used 9 of his patented inventions, including Tesla's invention of alternating current generators and alternating current transmission technology.
In fact, at that time, industrial and commercial, public facilities and household appliances all used expensive direct current. Because of the losses in the circuit, when using direct current, a generator set must be built every one kilometer. Therefore, when building the Niagara Hydropower Station, it was impossible to transmit the power in the form of direct current to Buffalo, New York, 35 kilometers away. Therefore, when building the Niagara Hydropower Station, the Americans adopted the AC power supply and transmission technology invented by Tesla, and used high-voltage power to achieve long-distance power supply. This epoch-making invention not only solves the problem of long-distance power supply from the Niagara Hydropower Station, but also brings people a convenient and cheap electricity environment.
Later, a bronze statue of Tesla was erected in the park of Niagara Falls to commemorate his contribution to the Niagara Hydropower Station.
Exemption from patent taxes
Tesla’s lifetime of inventions bear witness to his selfless contributions to society. Although he devoted his life to continuous research and obtained about 1,000 patented inventions. But he was in poverty in his later years and suffered from financial constraints for many years. Although many entrepreneurs took advantage of this genius scientist's love and talent and defrauded him of his research results and honors, in his later years he still worked hard to research and invent for the happiness of mankind.
Among Tesla’s many inventions, the ones that have benefited the public the most are alternating current (AC) and AC generators. In every corner of the world, the development of economy and trade, scientific progress and enjoyment of life are inseparable from the help of alternating current. The blackouts in the United States and Europe at the end of 2003 brought social and economic paralysis. As early as 1882, Tesla had invented the world's first alternating current generator, and in 1885 he invented multi-phase current and multi-phase power transmission technology, which is now the 50-60 Hz (hertz) power transmission technology widely used around the world. method.
After Edison invented direct current, electrical appliances were widely used, but the electricity bill was very high, so operating and exporting direct current became the most profitable business at that time.
By 1884, after Tesla left the Edison Company, he met George Westinghouse, the head of the Westinghouse Company, and with his support, he officially brought alternating current to the society of the day in 1888. At the opening ceremony of the World's Fair in Chicago in January 1893, Tesla demonstrated the ability of alternating current to light up 90,000 light bulbs at the same time, shocking the audience because direct current could not achieve this effect at all. . Afterwards, Tesla obtained the right to undertake the electrical design of the Niagara Hydropower Station based on this demonstration.
Since then, alternating current has made a comeback, replacing direct current as the mainstream power supply. Tesla owned the patent for alternating current. At that time, Tesla had to pay a royalty of US$1 for each AC produced. Driven by strong interests, a consortium at that time threatened Tesla to give up this patent and intended to monopolize and profit. After many negotiations, Tesla decided to give up its patent rights on alternating current, on the condition that the patent on alternating current would be made public permanently. From then on, he tore up the patent for alternating current and lost the right to collect royalties. From then on, alternating current was no longer patented and became a free invention.
Theoretical inventions
Tesla began to theorize about the possibility of warping (or simply changing) space and time using electricity and magnetism, and wanted to make it controllable by people. . Towards the end of his life, Tesla was fascinated by wave-particle duality, the theory that electromagnetic waves are both waves and particles, a proposition that had long been incorporated into quantum physics. Tesla's research in this field gave him the idea of ??manipulating certain patterns of electromagnetic waves to create a "wall of light." This mysterious wall can cause time, space, gravity and matter to be changed by will, and produce a series of things that seem to only appear in science fiction novels, including anti-gravity spacecraft, space teleportation and time travel (for details, see the movie " "Deadly Magic").
Perhaps his most bizarre invention is the "mind camera" machine. Tesla imagined that when a consciousness is formed in the brain, a corresponding pattern will appear on the retina, and this electronic file transmitted through neurons can be read and recorded by a machine. This information can then be processed by an artificial optic nerve and then played back on the screen (see the movie "The Final Cut" for details)
Social Impact
In the United States, Tesla A name comparable to any other inventor or scientist in history or popular culture. After he demonstrated wireless communication in 1893 and became the winner of the Battle of the Electric Currents, he became highly respected as one of America's greatest electrical engineers. Many of his early results became precursors to modern electrical engineering, and many of his discoveries were of groundbreaking importance. In 1943, the U.S. Supreme Court recognized him as the inventor of radio. Tesla never cared about his financial situation and died poor and forgotten.
Tesla’s legacy can be seen everywhere in the modern world of electricity. In addition to his achievements in electromagnetics and engineering, Tesla is also considered to have contributed to various fields such as robotics, ballistics, information science, nuclear physics, and theoretical physics. In his later years, Tesla was regarded as a mad scientist and was noted for his claims to create bizarre scientific inventions. Many of his achievements have been used with some controversy to support many pseudosciences, such as UFO theory and New Age occult theory. Tesla's contemporary admirers regard him as "the man who created the twentieth century."
At a meeting of the U.S. Congress on July 10, 1990, more than 10 U.S. senators took this opportunity to commemorate Tesla’s 134th birthday, and also praised him for his work in electric power science. and how he changed mankind’s understanding of the concept of power generation. Even during this session of Congress, Tesla was hailed as being greater than Edison (the inventor of direct current) in his lifetime.