Nikola Tesla, son of Milutin and Djouka Tesla, was born in Smilijan, Crotia on July 10, 1856. His father was a priest of a local Serbian Orthodox Church, while his mother was an expert needlework and an inventor of home implements. He was a clever child and pursued an education in science, despite his parent's urges to follow in his father's footsteps as a priest.
Nikola began his college education at Graz Polytechnic Institute and studied around the clock, usually starting around am and ending at 11pm. But after his father died of a stroke, Nikola left college and took a job at the government telegraph office closer to home.
He didn't use any blueprints, journals, or prototypes in his inventions. Instead he turned it into a visualization and tried to construct his ideas. In 1882 he went to work at Continental Edison Company in Paris and then 2 years later went to New York to meet the company's president, Thomas Edison. But because the two inventors were so different in background they went their separate ways.
Nikola Tesla established a laboratory where he experimented with shadow lamps, alternating currents and on various types of lighting. He invented many things such as the Tesla Coil, in 1891, which is used widely today in radio, televisions and other modern means of wireless communication. The Tesla Coil is a communication of two circuits. Both circuits had a coil of wire wound around a hollow tube. One coil is made of heavy wire and has only a few turns around the tube. The other wire, a finer wire, which is wound around many times. When an alternating current passes through the coil of the heavy wire, it produces a magnetic field. The magnetic field would then induce current in the finer wire and because of the differences on the wire and the number of turns, the frequency of the current in the finer coil is much higher , and the voltage is higher in the finer coil. Using this device, he produced an electric spark 41m(135ft), a distance of 40 km without the use of intervening wires. Tesla's system was used to light the World's Colombian Exposition in 1893 and this helped him win the contract to install the first power machinery at Niagara Falls in 1896.
The wireless transmission of energy would become the ultimate pursuit of Tesla's career. He discovered that a vacuum tube held in proximity to a Tesla coil would burst into illumination, without wires, without even a filament inside the glowing tube. By determining the frequency of the needed electric current, Tesla was able to turn a series of different lights on and off selectively, from yards away.
In 1898 he announced his invention of a telematic boat guided by remote control and proved this to spectators in Madison Square Garden. In 1899-1900, he made one of the greatest discoveries, terrestrial stationary waves. By this discovery he proved that the earth could be used as a conductor and as responsive as a tuning fork to electric vibrations of a certain frequency.
The same year he started constructing a wireless world broadcasting tower which was funded by J. Pierpont Morgan, but was quickly abandoned because of financial panic, labor troubles and Morgan's withdrawal of support.
Many of his later projects remained in his head because of lack of funding. Because of this, many of his ideas have become to fruition at the hands of others. One of his ideas which was never funded was an outline scheme for detecting ships at sea that was later developed as radar. Some of his other undeveloped ideas included electrical clocks and turbines. Even to this day, Tesla's notebooks are examined by engineers in search of unexploited ideas. As early as 1900 Tesla proposed a "world wireless" plant that would send not only ordinary messages but many other services. These included facsimiles of pictures and a program of time, weather, and other reports that were later introduced as broadcasting.
In 1917 he received the Edison Medal, the highest honor that the American Institute of Electrical Engineers could bestow. Also in 1956, as part of the international commemorations of the centennial of his birth, the word "tesla" was adopted as the unit of magnetic flux density in the mks system.
On January 7, 1943, Nikola Tesla died in New York City at the age of 87. Although he has failed to make the history books, the most successful people are not necessarily the most brilliant. He has paved the way for later scientists and his early theories and discoveries lead to inventions that have become a big part of our lives today, such as the X-Ray machine, electrical radio, fluorescent bulb, and the vacuum tube amplifier.
Nikola began his college education at Graz Polytechnic Institute and studied around the clock, usually starting around am and ending at 11pm. But after his father died of a stroke, Nikola left college and took a job at the government telegraph office closer to home.
He didn't use any blueprints, journals, or prototypes in his inventions. Instead he turned it into a visualization and tried to construct his ideas. In 1882 he went to work at Continental Edison Company in Paris and then 2 years later went to New York to meet the company's president, Thomas Edison. But because the two inventors were so different in background they went their separate ways.
Nikola Tesla established a laboratory where he experimented with shadow lamps, alternating currents and on various types of lighting. He invented many things such as the Tesla Coil, in 1891, which is used widely today in radio, televisions and other modern means of wireless communication. The Tesla Coil is a communication of two circuits. Both circuits had a coil of wire wound around a hollow tube. One coil is made of heavy wire and has only a few turns around the tube. The other wire, a finer wire, which is wound around many times. When an alternating current passes through the coil of the heavy wire, it produces a magnetic field. The magnetic field would then induce current in the finer wire and because of the differences on the wire and the number of turns, the frequency of the current in the finer coil is much higher , and the voltage is higher in the finer coil. Using this device, he produced an electric spark 41m(135ft), a distance of 40 km without the use of intervening wires. Tesla's system was used to light the World's Colombian Exposition in 1893 and this helped him win the contract to install the first power machinery at Niagara Falls in 1896.
The wireless transmission of energy would become the ultimate pursuit of Tesla's career. He discovered that a vacuum tube held in proximity to a Tesla coil would burst into illumination, without wires, without even a filament inside the glowing tube. By determining the frequency of the needed electric current, Tesla was able to turn a series of different lights on and off selectively, from yards away.
In 1898 he announced his invention of a telematic boat guided by remote control and proved this to spectators in Madison Square Garden. In 1899-1900, he made one of the greatest discoveries, terrestrial stationary waves. By this discovery he proved that the earth could be used as a conductor and as responsive as a tuning fork to electric vibrations of a certain frequency.
The same year he started constructing a wireless world broadcasting tower which was funded by J. Pierpont Morgan, but was quickly abandoned because of financial panic, labor troubles and Morgan's withdrawal of support.
Many of his later projects remained in his head because of lack of funding. Because of this, many of his ideas have become to fruition at the hands of others. One of his ideas which was never funded was an outline scheme for detecting ships at sea that was later developed as radar. Some of his other undeveloped ideas included electrical clocks and turbines. Even to this day, Tesla's notebooks are examined by engineers in search of unexploited ideas. As early as 1900 Tesla proposed a "world wireless" plant that would send not only ordinary messages but many other services. These included facsimiles of pictures and a program of time, weather, and other reports that were later introduced as broadcasting.
In 1917 he received the Edison Medal, the highest honor that the American Institute of Electrical Engineers could bestow. Also in 1956, as part of the international commemorations of the centennial of his birth, the word "tesla" was adopted as the unit of magnetic flux density in the mks system.
On January 7, 1943, Nikola Tesla died in New York City at the age of 87. Although he has failed to make the history books, the most successful people are not necessarily the most brilliant. He has paved the way for later scientists and his early theories and discoveries lead to inventions that have become a big part of our lives today, such as the X-Ray machine, electrical radio, fluorescent bulb, and the vacuum tube amplifier.
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