Biography
Serbian-American inventor and engineer who was a master of electricity
at a time when it was changing American life. He is the unsung creator of
the electric age, without whom our radio, auto ignition, telephone,
alternating current power generation and transmission, radio and
television would all have been impossible. He discovered the rotating
magnetic field, the basis of most alternating-current machinery, and held
more than 700 patents. His inventions make him one of the pioneers in the
distribution of electric energy, and his Tesla coil is widely used in
radio and television sets, among other things.
Many of his ideas 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. Tesla made his first million before he was
40, but gave up the royalties on his most profitable invention as a
humanitarian gesture. Handsome, magnetic and elegant, he was the
"catch" of New York society, yet remained unmarried and a
misanthrope.
Born into a family of Serbian origin, Tesla’s father was an Orthodox
priest. He had several sisters and one older brother, Dane, who died when
Niko was five. In his autobiography, Tesla tells of the early workings of
his mind in a description that we can only regard with wonder: he saw
flashes of light that interfered with his physical vision; when a word was
spoken, he would see the object so clearly that he had trouble
distinguishing between the imagined and the real; in later years he would
build a machine in his mind, run it to see where the wear was flawed and
make whatever repairs and adjustments were needed – before he ever began
his construction. At night in solitude, Tesla had an inner world of
personal vision where he made journeys and 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.
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, 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 kid 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 and taste. It was during this time that he had one of
his most famous ideas, that of 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. They parted company within a year but during
that time, Tesla was commissioned with the design of the AC generators
installed at Niagara Falls.
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 $12,000,000, Tesla tore up the contract, in order that people
could have the benefit of financially attainable electricity.
Perhaps the lowest point in his life was in 1886-87 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.
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. 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 Delmonico's he had 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.
In 1891, he invented the Tesla coil, widely used in radio and
television sets, and also became a United States citizen. Westinghouse
used Tesla’s system to light the World’s Columbian Exposition in
Chicago in 1893. The success there helped him win the contract to install
the first power machinery at Niagara Falls. The project brought power to
Buffalo in 1896.
Tesla regarded terrestrial stationary waves as his most important
discovery, which came about between May 1899 and early 1900 while he was
in Colorado Springs. At one time he was certain he had received signals
from another planet in his Colorado laboratory, a claim that was met with
derision in some scientific journals and delight by the media, which found
good press in his more unconventional ideas. Caustic criticism greeted his
speculations concerning communication with other planets, his assertions
that he could split the Earth like an apple, and his claim of having
invented a death ray capable of destroying 10,000 airplanes at a distance
of 250 miles (400 kilometres).
His discoveries proved that the Earth could be used as a conductor and
would respond to electrical vibrations of a certain frequency. He also was
able to light lamps without wires from a distance of 25 miles. His
greatest defeat was abandoning a wireless world broadcasting tower. After
assigning patent rights of telephony and telegraphy to his sponsor, J. P.
Morgan, the project was shut down when Tesla told Morgan that his real
intent in building the broadcasting tower was to be able to deliver free
energy. Following the broadcasting tower debacle, Tesla worked more with
turbines and other projects.
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, he
wore new gloves weekly and a new tie daily. He maintained the same weight
through his lifetime, 142 lbs and always slept two hours a night.
By 1943, he had begun suffering heart trouble and fainting spells along
with some mental confusion. On 1/01/1943 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 1/05/1943. It is assumed
that he died 1/07/1943 in New York City and his body was discovered on the
following day. Over 2,000 people attended his funeral in Manhattan, though
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.”
Other Biographies:
- Inez Hunt and Wanetta W. Draper, Lightning in His Hand: The Life Story of Nikola
Tesla, 1964, is a complete, authoritative, non-technical
biography.
- Nikola Tesla Museum, “Nikola Tesla 1856-1943: Lectures, Patents,
Articles,” 1956, contains authentic reprints, diagrams, lectures,
and considerable detailed information.
- “Nikola Tesla, Experiments with Alternate Currents of High
Potential and High Frequency,” 1904, furnishes Tesla's own story of
his Colorado experiments.
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