Tesla: From wireless energy transmission to particle weapons, Tesla invented countless things in his life. The most brilliant movement was the invention of the alternating current transmission system and radio. The Niagara Hydropower Station designed by him led the United States into the United States. The true electrical age. Not only that, he also took the world's first X-ray photo, invented the first wireless control machine, engine spark plug, neon light, etc. At the same time, he also predicted that in the future, humans will use antennas to receive solar energy, control weather changes through electricity, and all countries will be included in the global broadcast system (some say this is the Internet model) - he can be described as the real "prophecy emperor" [6]. Although Tesla made extraordinary achievements, his ultimate dream - global wireless power transmission - failed, which led to his decline in his later years and left endless legends.
, Tesla coil Tesla coil is the basis of wireless power transmission experimental equipment. This resonant transformer circuit was invented by Tesla in 1891 [7] and can generate high-frequency alternating current with high voltage and low current. Tesla coils usually include two (or three) groups of coupled resonant circuits, which transfer energy to the secondary side of the transformer through the primary resonant circuit. That is to say, the AC power first charges the capacitor through the high-voltage transformer. When the capacitor voltage reaches the discharge threshold of the discharger, the discharger ignites, and the high-voltage capacitor and primary coil form a high-frequency oscillator to transmit energy to the secondary. Tesla used it to create the famous artificial lightning and wireless communication equipment. Schematic diagram of Tesla coil 2. Wireless energy transmission Tesla was inspired by a thunderstorm and discovered that lightning is a kind of wireless transmission of electrical energy, so he hoped to use artificial lightning to realize the dream of global wireless energy transmission. He improved the Tesla coil and invented the amplifying transmitter. This is an air-core multi-stage resonant transformer that can produce extremely high voltages. The air is ionized under the action of high voltage and becomes a conductor, forming artificial lightning between the two conductors of sending and receiving, thus transmitting electrical energy. At the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893, Tesla demonstrated his wireless phosphorescent lighting. The light bulb without any wires magically glowed, shocking all the spectators present [8]. Later, Tesla built towers in Colorado Springs and Wardencliffe, and lit neon searchlights 25 miles (about 40 kilometers) away on Long Island. However, there is a gap that is difficult to cross in wireless transmission, because the object of wireless energy transmission is electrical energy rather than electrical signals. The dispersion of radio waves is not a bad thing for wireless communications, but it brings great difficulties to wireless power transmission - as the spatial distance increases, power transmission will rapidly attenuate, and transmission efficiency cannot be guaranteed. Although the tower did not realize Tesla's vision of global power transmission, it inspired him to propose the concept of particle beam weapons.
The particle weapon Wardenclyffe Tower was once called a "million-dollar waste" by the American media. But in fact, if the earth's ionosphere is regarded as a coil, global transmission is not impossible, but there is an efficiency issue. Today, the U.S. military's Active Auroral Project (HAARP) emits high-frequency radio waves to the ionosphere through a huge antenna array to stimulate part of the ionosphere to study the potential of the ionosphere in developing radio communication enhancement technology and surveillance technology [9]. Comes from Tesla's idea. However, when it comes to the invention that gave Tesla the cloak of a magic weapon, it has to be teleforce. It is a charged particle beam emitter and was first published in the New York Sun and New York Times on July 11, 1934.[10] It consists of a Tesla coil and a special open vacuum tube. According to Tesla's vision, it can accelerate liquid tungsten or mercury particles to 48 times the speed of sound, and eject the particles in a direction through electrostatic repulsion. Teleforce schematic diagram Although the concept proposed by Tesla was extremely advanced in predicting today's particle weapons, it has always been an idea, and there is no direct evidence that such a device actually existed. He promoted this invention to his home country of the former Yugoslavia and proposed a location for the construction of death ray equipment. He later made plans for the US Department of Defense and the United Kingdom [11], but none were adopted. Eventually it became a collection of the Intelligence Agency.
After understanding Tesla and his Wardenclyffe Tower, we can find that the connection between the Tunguska explosion and Tesla is more of a forced one. 1. Wardenclyffe Tower in 1908 First of all, in 1908, the year of the Tunguska outbreak, Wardenclyffe Tower was basically out of service, making it difficult to conduct large-scale experiments. Tesla's research funds mainly come from Morgan's sponsorship of its development of the global broadcast system and Tesla's AC motor patents (Morgan is the most famous financial giant in modern American financial history, and once had the power to influence the American economy. The Titanic It was funded and built by his consortium). In 1901, Marconi's radio equipment achieved transoceanic transmission, causing a great blow to Tesla's global broadcast system research. Unable to bear the huge electricity bills and seemingly bottomless investments, Morgan withdrew his funds in 1904. In 1905, Tesla's AC motor patent also expired, and Tesla could no longer afford the cost of Wardenclyffe Tower. By 1906, all laboratory staff had evacuated and Wardenclyffe Tower was largely decommissioned. 2. Can electric energy really reach Tunguska? One of the "evidences" for doubting that Tesla caused the Tunguska explosion is that Tunguska is located at the same latitude as Tesla's electric tower. But in fact, Long Island, New York and Colorado, where the towers were built, are not close in latitude to the Tunguska. In addition, the directivity of long-distance wireless power transmission is very poor, so it is difficult to use it to achieve long-distance precision strikes. Moreover, due to the dispersion of wireless power transmission, with the technical level at that time, even if Wardenclyffe Tower was aimed at Tunguska launch Electromagnetic waves that are too highly concentrated cannot reach Russia, which is as far away as 10,000 kilometers away, with considerable energy. Scientific exploration of the Tunguska explosion Although it is almost impossible for Tesla's experiment to cause the Tunguska explosion, the scientific community has not yet determined the cause of the Tunguska explosion. However, studies of geotechnical composition have shed light on the answer. In 1997, Hou Quanlin and Ma Peixue from the Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, analyzed sedimentary layer samples from the Tunguska area and found elemental anomalies in the samples. They speculated that it was caused by an increase in extraterrestrial material, probably caused by a meteorite impact [12 ]. In June 2007, scientists from the University of Bologna discovered that Lake Checo near Tunguska may have been formed by the impact of meteorite fragments from the explosion. In 1961, some scientists inspected the lake and believed that the geological age of the lake bed was more than 5,000 years old [13]. However, recent research has found that only about 1 meter of the lake bed is a normal sedimentary layer, and the true age of the lake bed should be about 100 years [14]. At the same time, the cone shape of the lake bed is consistent with the crater. The scientists' conclusion was published on the website of the University of Bologna: "Lake Ceco, close to the center of the Tunguska explosion, may be a crater formed by celestial debris." They studied the composition of the lake bed and believed that the formation time of the lake should be Around 1908[15]. Research is still ongoing. If samples of deep soil cores in the lake can be obtained, perhaps this century-old mystery will be solved. There is no doubt that Tesla was a great inventor, and many of his inventions changed and influenced the world. We know too little about his life story, which makes it even more necessary to have works that can truly reflect Tesla's life. Those so-called "documentaries" that are full of pseudoscience should be dismissed!
Long-range strike (teleforce) schematic diagram. Although the concept proposed by Tesla was extremely advanced in predicting today's particle weapons, it has always been a hypothesis, and there is no direct evidence to prove that such a device actually exists. Pass. He promoted this invention to his home country of the former Yugoslavia and proposed a location for the construction of death ray equipment. He later made plans for the US Department of Defense and the United Kingdom [11], but none were adopted. Eventually it became a collection of the Intelligence Agency. After understanding Tesla and his Wardenclyffe Tower, we can find that the connection between the Tunguska explosion and Tesla is more of a forced one. 1. Wardenclyffe Tower in 1908 First of all, in 1908, the year of the Tunguska outbreak, Wardenclyffe Tower was basically out of service, making it difficult to conduct large-scale experiments.
Tesla's research funds mainly come from Morgan's sponsorship of its development of the global broadcast system and Tesla's AC motor patents (Morgan is the most famous financial giant in modern American financial history, and once had the power to influence the American economy. The Titanic It was funded and built by his consortium). In 1901, Marconi's radio equipment achieved transoceanic transmission, causing a great blow to Tesla's global broadcast system research. Unable to bear the huge electricity bills and seemingly bottomless investments, Morgan withdrew his funds in 1904. In 1905, Tesla's AC motor patent also expired, and Tesla could no longer afford the cost of Wardenclyffe Tower. By 1906, all laboratory staff had evacuated and Wardenclyffe Tower was largely decommissioned. 2. Can electric energy really reach Tunguska? One of the "evidences" for doubting that Tesla caused the Tunguska explosion is that Tunguska is located at the same latitude as Tesla's electric tower. But in fact, Long Island, New York and Colorado, where the towers were built, are not close in latitude to the Tunguska. In addition, the directivity of long-distance wireless power transmission is very poor, so it is difficult to use it to achieve long-distance precision strikes. Moreover, due to the dispersion of wireless power transmission, with the technical level at that time, even if Wardenclyffe Tower was aimed at Tunguska launch Electromagnetic waves that are too highly concentrated cannot reach Russia, which is as far away as 10,000 kilometers away, with considerable energy. Scientific exploration of the Tunguska explosion Although it is almost impossible for Tesla's experiment to cause the Tunguska explosion, the scientific community has not yet determined the cause of the Tunguska explosion. However, studies of geotechnical composition have shed light on the answer. In 1997, Hou Quanlin and Ma Peixue from the Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, analyzed sedimentary layer samples from the Tunguska area and found elemental anomalies in the samples. They speculated that it was caused by an increase in extraterrestrial material, probably caused by a meteorite impact [12 ]. In June 2007, scientists from the University of Bologna discovered that Lake Checo near Tunguska may have been formed by the impact of meteorite fragments from the explosion. In 1961, some scientists inspected the lake and believed that the geological age of the lake bed was more than 5,000 years old [13]. However, recent research has found that only about 1 meter of the lake bed is a normal sedimentary layer, and the true age of the lake bed should be about 100 years [14]. At the same time, the cone shape of the lake bed is consistent with the crater. The scientists' conclusion was published on the website of the University of Bologna: "Lake Ceco, close to the center of the Tunguska explosion, may be a crater formed by celestial debris." They studied the composition of the lake bed and believed that the formation time of the lake should be Around 1908[15]. Research is still ongoing. If samples of deep soil cores in the lake can be obtained, perhaps this century-old mystery will be solved. There is no doubt that Tesla was a great inventor, and many of his inventions changed and influenced the world. We know too little about his life story, which makes it even more necessary to have works that can truly reflect Tesla's life. Those so-called "documentaries" that are full of pseudoscience should be dismissed!
With the sudden popularity of Nikola Tesla in China in the past two years, the name of this inventor is appearing more and more in both online and print media. Last year, even the youth literature magazine "Solo" actually published a Q&A about his life story.
However, who is Tesla and what are his scientific contributions? This is a very interesting question. If someone had asked him three years ago, I would probably have said that this is one of the most underrated figures in the tech world in the country and his deeds should be publicized more. But who would have expected that just three years later, Tesla would turn around and be in the limelight forever. Nowadays, at least on the Internet, its evaluation has long been overcorrected. If current trends continue, it won't take long for this Serbian-born inventor to go from "the most underestimated in the country" to the "most overrated" scientific figure in the country, and probably "the only one". This can't help but make people feel dumbfounded.
Of course, it must be admitted that even today, Tesla is still a relatively unfamiliar name to most Chinese. Compared with Edison, the well-known invention king, Tesla, as another great inventor of that era, is obviously far less famous than the former.
Few people know that there was a "current war" between the two, and in the end Tesla's alternating current defeated Edison's direct current and became the mainstream method of power supply today. In addition, Tesla also made considerable achievements in the fields of radio, X-rays, and remote control machinery. He is a great figure in the history of electrical engineering. In recognition of Tesla's achievements in the field of electromagnetism, in 1960, the International Congress of Weights and Measures announced his name as the basic unit of magnetic induction intensity (T).
But on the other hand, various magical stories about Tesla began to spread more and more widely and became more and more mysterious. Because the life of this inventor is extremely legendary, and some of his ideas are truly unimaginable and shrouded in mystery. Coupled with the wild boasts of various media and some biographers, the combination of various factors makes this special Silla has become a favorite subject of various science fiction novels, legendary comics, and suspense movies. In 1995, a British writer mentioned Tesla in his novel "The Prestige", describing the machine he invented that could duplicate a magician into two people, thus completing the magic of "teleportation". In 2006, the great director Christopher Nolan remade it into a movie of the same name. It received high praise after its release and is still ranked among the top 100 on the IMDB website.
If these "myths" are just for entertainment purposes, they are actually harmless. But it is inevitable that as Tesla's fame increases, all kinds of modern wizards, conspiracy theorists, pseudo-scientists, alien enthusiasts, masters of Eastern mysticism, molecules with special functions, etc. have also followed suit. Everyone wants to use Tesla as a propaganda tool, which makes its original appearance even more confusing and almost unrecognizable.
In 2007, a Russian freelance writer and director Vitaly Pravdivchev shot a "documentary" called "Tesla: King of the World". The content of this film can be said to be the culmination of the above heretical theories. Its central idea is that Tesla has magical special powers. He can not only "see within" but also foresee the future. He discovered that the universe is an "intelligent organic life form". When it "vibrates" with one of the parallel universes, it can receive information from its "information library". As a result, he invented various advanced weapons, such as remote-controlled torpedoes, suspended flying saucers, navigation missiles, planetary defense systems, etc. Because these weapons are too powerful, they cannot be "fighted" once they are possessed, so he I want to sell it to the United States, Britain, Germany, and the Soviet Union to fundamentally "eliminate war." Among them, the most amazing weapon is the so-called "death ray". When Tesla started his device for experiments, it actually caused destruction half a world away, which is the famous "Tunguska explosion" in history. ". The advanced level of this invention is beyond our reach to this day, but unfortunately because the FBI confiscated many of his manuscripts after his death, we can no longer know the details... In good conscience, Platts' imagination can be considered It's quite rich, but anyone with a bit of a scientific mind should understand what kind of film this is. Let's take a look at this person's other works, including "Flying Saucers of the Third Reich" (the content can be seen at a glance), "Mystery of the Three Oceans" (telling the story of undersea ghosts), and "Secret Areas of the Moon" (telling the discoveries made by Apollo after landing on the moon) alien story), etc. After filming "Tesla", last year this person made a companion piece "One Hundred Years of the Tunguska Invasion" on the same subject, in which the narrative changed to Tesla saving the earth. As for this year, Uncle Pu has grandly launched a new work called "Beware of the Mirror", which tells the story of seeing multiple worlds in the past and future through the mirror...
It goes without saying that this person is obviously Particularly interested in topics such as supernatural powers, extraterrestrial life, historical mysteries, conspiracy theories, etc. In China, I would probably be a loyal reader of "Mystery" and "UFO Exploration" magazines. If I were to specialize in writing in Europe and the United States, I might be able to write a few "Gods" like Daniken and Hancock. "The Car" and "The Fingerprint of God", being a best-selling author of "alternative science books" is not a sign of humiliation.
He dares to make up such a flawless lie at will, which shows his level and attitude.
However, it was with such a film that Nikola Tesla "came to prominence" in China. I don't know whether this was his luck or sorrow. Since then, countless articles praising Tesla have appeared on the Internet in the past two years, and the content is all kinds of extreme. It seems that "re-understanding Tesla" has really become a top priority.
Unfortunately, from a technological perspective, no one has written a very good biography of Tesla so far. Although as of today, no less than twenty biographies about Tesla have been published (in English alone, this number far exceeds that of most famous scientists), most of them are in science, patents, technology There are description flaws in all aspects. If you want to understand some specific controversies, the best way now is to check papers, which is a pity.
For those readers who want to know the true life of Tesla, under the current circumstances, the best choice may still be Margaret Cheney's "The Buried Genius" (Tesla : Man Out Of Time) book. Although it is somewhat outdated, this is still one of the more famous among the many English-language Tesla biographies. The subsequent PBS documentary "The Master of Lightning" was mainly based on another book by the author. In 1985, Science Popularization Press published this biography, and last year, with the popularity of Tesla, Chongqing Publishing House published this book again. Of course, although it is claimed to be the "latest addition", in fact, in my opinion, it is nothing more than making some slight text adjustments (not even a re-translation) based on the old translation, and adding the original English text to some proper nouns. That's all, there is essentially no difference. Those readers who have already bought the old copy do not need to invest again.
The advantage of Cheney's version of the biography is that she uses a large amount of information to describe Tesla's life while also showing in detail every move in the social situations of that era, depicting him and the people around him at that time. The relationship between many important characters and highlights the social scene. The whole book is mainly from this perspective. However, this has also become its prominent shortcoming: because the author does not have a very deep understanding of physics and engineering (especially physics and engineering of that era), the narrative from a scientific perspective is relatively lacking. In her writing, Tesla seems to be a genius who just sits in the laboratory, and inspiration will continue to come out of thin air, and there is almost no involvement in the development of his scientific thought trajectory, experimental design ideas, etc. , there are even many basic errors in the description of some experiments and the history of physics. At this point, not only various book reviews, but even the translators of the old edition have noticed it (mentioned in the preface).
In addition, considering the current bad atmosphere, I would like to add here that because the author’s focus is not on the scientific aspect, but on highlighting the personal genius image of the protagonist (the author seems to be emotionally She is more partial to Tesla), which makes her tend to slightly exaggerate some of Tesla's achievements. A typical example is that she easily and far-fetchedly describes an original concept as the later "father of so-and-so" or "created so-and-so", which is exactly the same as the way Tesla is praised today (such as CCTV The "documentary" praised Tesla as a "pioneer of the Internet" just because he proposed to achieve global communication). But from the perspective of scientific history, this is not a meaningful statement. At least it is difficult for me to agree that Tesla is one of the "founders" of cryogenic engineering or automation.
Secondly, when it comes to priority disputes between theories and patents, authors rarely provide clear and strict definitions of the concepts involved, and this is often the most important point. If you want to better understand issues such as the "Radio War", you cannot figure out the essence of it just by relying on the description in the author's book (of course, the specific details are beyond the scope of this article).
Finally, this author does not know whether he was influenced by Tesla, and he often has some mystical tendencies.
Any reader with a basic scientific literacy who reads "...the modern electrical engineering community believes that Tesla's ultra-sensitive vacuum tubes could...detect...other so-called paranormal phenomena, including living beings commonly known as ghosts" (9 Chapter) I’m afraid you’ll break out in a cold sweat when you read a sentence like this. At least, I really don’t know which country’s “electrical engineering community” has ever recognized that vacuum tubes can detect the existence of so-called “ghosts”. Readers should always pay attention to this.
But what’s interesting is that the introduction to Tesla on the cover of this new edition is almost all ridiculous information copied from CCTV’s “documentary”. In the introduction to the translator, he repeatedly emphasized that he had learned "meditation of sound and light" in a meditation center and received "initiation" from the teacher. I really don't know what the purpose is. Perhaps the readers this book is intended for actually come here for these contents? If this is the case, then there is nothing we can do.
In addition, last year, Law Press also translated and published some letters written by Tesla during his lifetime, namely "The Genius Forgotten by the World: Memoirs of Tesla". Although it is not a complete autobiography, readers may also be able to get a glimpse of Tesla's inner world from his own words. By the way, the introduction to Tesla on the cover of this book was also influenced by the CCTV "documentary".
There may be more Tesla biographies published in the future. I personally recommend translating Seifer’s Wizard: The Life and Times of Nicola Tesla. This book uses more updated materials and can also clarify many rumors about the FBI's "confiscated documents". However, the author mainly describes Tesla's psychological development, but is still lacking in technical description. Perhaps someone will write a better biography of Tesla in the future and find a better position for the inventor in the pure history of technology. ■