The Extraordinary Life of Nikola Tesla (Serbian-American inventor)

           In this article we'll discuss about Nikola Tesla and their extraordinary life.

Biography of Nikola Tesla 

Born - 10 July 1856 

Died  -  7 January 1943 (aged 86)

Nationality  -  Austrian (1856–1891)

                          American (1891–1943)                 

Education  -  Graz University of 

                          Technology  (dropped out)

          Nikola Tesla, Serbian American inventor and engineer who discovered and patented the rotating magnetic field, the basis of most alternating-current machinery. He also developed the three-phase system of electric power transmission. He immigrated to the United States in 1884 and sold the patent rights to his system of alternating-current dynamos, transformers, and motors to George Westinghouse. In 1891 he invented the Tesla coil, an induction coil widely used in radio technology.

           Tesla was from a family of Serbian origin. His father was an Orthodox priest; his mother was unschooled but highly intelligent. As he matured, he displayed remarkable imagination and creativity as well as a poetic touch.

           Training for an engineering career, he attended the Technical University at Graz, Austria, and the University of Prague. At Graz he first saw the Gramme dynamo, which operated as a generator and, when reversed, became an electric motor, and he conceived a way to use alternating current to advantage. Later, at Budapest, he visualized the principle of the rotating magnetic field and developed plans for an induction motor that would become his first step toward the successful utilization of alternating current. In 1882 Tesla went to work in Paris for the Continental Edison Company, and, while on assignment to Strassburg in 1883, he constructed, after work hours, his first induction motor. Tesla sailed for America in 1884, arriving in New York with four cents in his pocket, a few of his own poems, and calculations for a flying machine. He first found employment with Thomas Edison, but the two inventors were far apart in background and methods, and their separation was inevitable.

            In May 1888 George Westinghouse, head of the Westinghouse Electric Company in Pittsburgh, bought the patent rights to Tesla’s polyphase system of alternating-current dynamos, transformers, and motors. The transaction precipitated a titanic power struggle between Edison’s direct-current systems and the Tesla-Westinghouse alternating-current approach, which eventually won out.

           Tesla soon established his own laboratory, where his inventive mind could be given free rein. He experimented with shadowgraphs similar to those that later were to be used by Wilhelm Röntgen when he discovered X-rays in 1895. Tesla’s countless experiments included work on a carbon button lamp, on the power of electrical resonance, and on various types of lighting.

          In order to allay fears of alternating currents, Tesla gave exhibitions in his laboratory in which he lit lamps by allowing electricity to flow through his body. He was often invited to lecture at home and abroad. The Tesla coil, which he invented in 1891, is widely used today in radio and television sets and other electronic equipment. That year also marked the date of Tesla’s U.S. citizenship.

            Westinghouse used Tesla’s alternating current system to light the World’s Columbian Exposition at Chicago in 1893. This success was a factor in their winning the contract to install the first power machinery at Niagara Falls, which bore Tesla’s name and patent numbers. The project carried power to Buffalo by 1896.

             In 1898 Tesla announced his invention of a teleautomatic boat guided by remote control. When skepticism was voiced, Tesla proved his claims for it before a crowd in Madison Square Garden.

           In Colorado Springs, Colorado, where he stayed from May 1899 until early 1900, Tesla made what he regarded as his most important discovery—terrestrial stationary waves. By this discovery he proved that Earth could be used as a conductor and made to resonate at a certain electrical frequency. He also lit 200 lamps without wires from a distance of 40 km (25 miles) and created man-made lightning, producing flashes measuring 41 metres (135 feet). 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.

Some inventions of Nikola Tesla 

(1) Alternating current

         Alternating current, abbreviation AC, flow of electric charge that periodically reverses. It starts, say, from zero, grows to a maximum, decreases to zero, reverses, reaches a maximum in the opposite direction, returns again to the original value, and repeats this cycle indefinitely. The interval of time between the attainment of a definite value on two successive cycles is called the period, the number of cycles or periods per second is the frequency, and the maximum value in either direction is the amplitude of the alternating current. Low frequencies, such as 50 and 60 cycles per second (hertz), are used for domestic and commercial power, but alternating currents of frequencies around 100,000,000 cycles per second (100 megahertz) are used in television and those of several thousand megahertz in radar or microwave communication. Cellular telephones operate at frequencies of about 1,000 megahertz (1 gigahertz).

          For decades, alternating current (AC) had the distinct advantage over direct current (DC; a steady flow of electric charge in one direction) of being able to transmit power over large distances without great loss of energy to resistance. The power transmitted is equal to the current times the voltage; however, the power lost is equal to the resistance times the square of the current. Changing voltages was very difficult with the first DC electric power grids in the late 19th century. Because of the power loss, these grids used low voltages to maintain high current and thus could only transmit usable power over short distances. DC power transmission was soon supplanted by AC systems that transmit power at very high voltages (and correspondingly low current) and easily use transformers to change the voltage. (However, current DC systems can easily change voltages.) Current AC systems transmit power from generators at hundreds of thousands of volts and use transformers to lower the voltage to 220 volts (as in much of the world) or 120 volts (as in North America) for individual customers. See also electric current.

Tesla's AC Generator 

(2) Tesla Coil

       A Tesla coil is an electrical resonant transformer circuit designed by inventor Nikola Tesla in 1891. It is used to produce high-voltage, low-current, high-frequency alternating-current electricity. Tesla experimented with a number of different configurations consisting of two, or sometimes three, coupled resonant electric circuits. 

      In 1891, Tesla unveiled one of his most important inventions, the "Tesla coil," a high-frequency transformer capable of creating very high voltage at low current. He built several variations of his invention.

       The most popular of his designs is made up of a transformer, capacitor, spark gap, main coil, minor coil and discharge sphere. Here is how it works: The transformer receives a charge of about 100 volts from an outside source and increases it to as many as 50,000 volts or more. The capacitor stores the voltage until it reaches its limit, at which point the spark gap emits all of the pent-up energy in one massive outburst, surging to the main coil, which is often built out of wide copper wire, generating a powerful magnetic field. The current continues to the minor coil that serves as a transformer, utilizing the effects of the magnetic field to build enormous quantities of voltage. At this point, the electricity flows to a discharge sphere that emits the current as a stream or arc of sparks.

           Circuitry using the Tesla coil was part of the first generation of transmitters to carry wireless telegraphy. Tesla used his brainchild to research such diverse areas as lighting, X-rays and electric power transmission. Customized Tesla coils are now frequently used to ignite powerful mercury and sodium streetlamps.

           Although they have now been largely replaced by more modern circuitry, Tesla coils frequently show up in popular culture, most commonly in the form of high-tech guns in video games, blasting bolts of lightning at adversaries. On the big screen, a Tesla coil was used to produce lighting effects for the 1979 film "Star Trek: The Motion Picture." 

(3) Induction Motor (AC Motor)

        Nikola Tesla invented the induction motor with rotating magnetic field that made unit drives for machines feasible and made AC power transmission an economic necessity. Born in Smiljan, Croatia, the son of a Serbian Orthodox clergyman, Tesla attended Joanneum, a polytechnic school in Graz and the University of Prague for two years. He started work in the engineering department of the Austrian telegraph system, then became an electrical engineer at an electric power company in Budapest and later at another in Strasbourg.

         While in technical school, Tesla became convinced that commutators were unnecessary on motors; while with the power company, he built a crude motor which demonstrated the truth of his theory. In 1884, Tesla came to the United States and joined the Edison Machine Works as a dynamo designer. In 1887 and 1888 Tesla had an experimental shop at 89 Liberty Street, New York, and there he invented the induction motor. He sold the invention to Westinghouse in July 1888 and spent a year in Pittsburgh instructing Westinghouse engineers.

        

         Moreover, Tesla’s inventions included:

• Magnifying Transmitter
• Tesla Turbine
• Shadowgraph
• Radio
• Neon Lamp
• Hydroelectric Power
• Radio Controlled Boat etc...

       Tesla obtained more than 100 patents in his lifetime. Despite his 700 inventions Tesla was not wealthy. For many years he worked in his room at the Hotel New Yorker, where he died.

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