Nikola Tesla - Biography, Inventions and Achievements

Nikola Tesla was a Serbian-American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, physicist, and futurist best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electrical supply system. Tesla started working in the telephony and electrical fields before emigrating to the United States in 1884 to work for Thomas Edison. He soon struck out on his own with financial backers, setting up laboratories/companies to develop a range of electrical devices. His patented AC induction motor and transformer were licensed by George Westinghouse, who also hired Tesla as a consultant to help develop an alternating current system.

Tesla is also known for his high-voltage, high-frequency power experiments in New York and Colorado Springs which included patented devices and theoretical work used in the invention of radio communication, for his X-ray experiments, and for his ill-fated attempt at intercontinental wireless transmission in his unfinished Wardenclyffe Tower project.

Tesla's achievements and his abilities as a showman demonstrating his seemingly miraculous inventions made him world-famous. Although he made a great deal of money from his patents, he spent a lot on numerous experiments over the years. In the last few decades of his life, he ended up living in diminished circumstances as a recluse in Room 3327 of the New Yorker Hotel, occasionally making unusual statements to the press.
Because of his pronouncements and the nature of his work over the years, Tesla gained a reputation in popular culture as the archetypal "mad scientist".

He died penniless and in debt on 7 January 1943. Tesla's work fell into relative obscurity after his death, but since the 1990s, his reputation has experienced a comeback in popular culture. In 2005, he was listed amongst the top 100 nominees in the TV show The Greatest American, an open access popularity poll conducted by AOL and The Discovery Channel. His work and reputed inventions are also at the center of many conspiracy theories and have also been used to support various pseudosciences, UFO theories and New Age occultism. In 1960, in honor of Tesla, the General Conference on Weights and Measures for the International System of Units dedicated the term "tesla" to the SI unit measure for magnetic field strength.

Inventions, Achievements and Brief Introduction of Nikola Tesla

• Nikola Tesla was born July 10, 1856, in the Lika region of the Austrian Empire (modern-day Croatia).
• Tesla earned degrees in physics, mathematics, and mechanical and electrical engineering from the Austrian Polytechnic Institute.
• In 1881, Tesla moved to Budapest, Hungary, to work for the American Telephone Company. It was during his work there that he reportedly invented a telephone amplifier or repeater that some believe was actually the world's first loudspeaker system.
• In 1882, Tesla moved to Paris to work for the Continental Edison Company, where he developed the induction motor, and began working with rotating magnetic fields.
• Tesla arrived in the United States in 1884 to work for Thomas Edison's Machine Works Company. One of his first assignments was to completely redesign the company's direct current generators.
• One of the most visible legacies to Tesla’s unique visions is the unfinished Wardenclyffe Tower, a massive incomplete construction on Long Island that was dedicated to Tesla’s idea of wireless communications and energy transfer. 
• Begun in 1901, Tesla moved his laboratories here, and although the project turned into a financial debacle and eventually was shut down, the enormous foundations of the lighthouse-style structure still remain. It’s fascinating to imagine what kind of a steam-punk world would have came to pass in the early 20th century had large 
• Tesla transmission towers become reality. The Wardenclyffe Tower did, however, become a symbol of the device that will forever be associated with the man: the Tesla coil. 
• This is an innovative method to produce a high frequency alternating current with high voltage but a low current … and yes, the Tesla coil became a staple of every bad science fiction and horror movie in the 1950s.
• Tesla was involved in notable feuds with two other great visionaries of his day, and in the end, that may have cost him a Nobel Prize. One such battle was with Guglielmo Marconi over the invention of the radio. Tesla's patent for the invention of "wireless telegraphy" was eventually upheld by the Supreme Court, but it’s been said that Marconi won the Nobel in 1909 because of the failure of the Wardenclyffe Project. 
• Tesla was also involved in a long-running feud with Thomas Edison concerning the future of commercial electricity. When both men were mentioned as possibilities to share the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1915, they each made it clear they would not accept if it meant sharing. As a result, neither man ever won the coveted honor. 
• To be fair, it was a highly competitive era in science, and even Albert Einstein failed to win a Nobel for either of his revolutionary theories on Special or General Relativity, but he instead won the 1921 award for his studies on the photoelectric effect.
• One of Tesla’s more fascinating ideas that he never saw to fruition was his idea for a “wingless aircraft.” Tesla theorized an aircraft could be propelled by an ion-driven reaction engine and controlled by various ground transmission stations. 
• This would alleviate the need for wings, ailerons, and the like. This sounded like science fiction in Tesla’s time, but NASA today uses ion-thrust to propel spacecraft, most notably the Dawn mission to the asteroids Ceres and Vesta. 
• First pioneered and space-tested by the Deep Space 1 spacecraft launched in 1998, an ion-drive provides a low steady thrust that requires relatively low mass-to-thrust ratio and thus has a low mass penalty for the spacecraft.
• Tesla, like many great minds, was not without grandiose claims, especially in his later years. We often remember great names such as Einstein, Mendeleev, and Tesla for what they got right, and not for the many blind alleys they went down to get there. In a more enlightened age, it’s always fun to speculate on whether such great overachievers may have suffered from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Asperger’s Syndrome, or were merely industrious by nature. Certainly, the mystique surrounding Tesla provides fuel for the legend. For example, Tesla claimed to have developed a dynamic theory of gravity as an alternative to Einstein, which he never published. He also conceived of a plan for a directed-energy weapon that may have predated ideas for the laser.
• Tesla obtained around 300 patents in his lifetime, a number bested only by a few peers, such as Edison. The fact that the FBI classified Tesla’s papers after his death only added to his legend. 
• Like many great minds, stress may have gotten to Tesla in his later years as he became obsessed with the number 3. He died in relative anonymity in a 33rd floor room in the New Yorker Hotel in 1943.
• Edison reportedly agreed to pay Tesla $50,000 if his modifications were successful, but when they were, Edison reneged on his offer and Tesla resigned.
• In 1886, Tesla founded the Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing Company. Within the first year, Tesla's financial investors disagreed with his plan for an alternating current motor and fired him from the company.
• In reply to: 1887, Tesla constructed the first brushless alternate-current inductor motor, which he demonstrated to the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (now IEEE).
• In reply to: 1888, Tesla worked with George Westinghouse at the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company's Pittsburgh labs on the Tesla coil, originally developed for wireless communication and power transmission.
• At the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago, Tesla and Westinghouse introduced AC power by using it to illuminate the building that housed electrical exhibits.
• In 1895, Tesla generated 1 million AC volts using a conical Tesla coil. Around the same time, Tesla investigated the skin effect in conductors, designed tuned circuits, invented a machine for inducing sleep, and transmitted electromagnetic energy without wires, effectively building the first radio transmitter.
• Tesla had a hand in many different fields of science and research that went beyond the electromagnetism and electromechanical engineering he is often associated with. Some of his work dealt with robotics, remote control, radar, nuclear physics, and computer science. The achievements of Tesla have also been used to support a variety of theories, including beliefs concerning UFOs and early New Age occultism.
• In 1943, the Supreme Court of the United States gave him credit as being the inventor of the radio.
• Some of the inventions and contributions to the world linked to Nikola Tesla include the Tesla turbine, Tesla coil, induction motor, and the death ray.
• Some of the awards and recognition that Tesla earned include the Edison Medal (1916), Elliott Cresson Medal (1893), and John Scott Medal (1934).
• When Tesla was in the United States, he gained a reputation that challenged all the other inventors and scientists during his time. However, his ultimate fame and recognition suffered due to his eccentric ways. At times, his thoughts were dismissed as being to odd and some people looked at him as a 'mad scientist.'
• Unfortunately, Tesla spent all of his energy in his work, but never took the time to organize his finances. When he died, he was poor.
• There is a monument in Niagara Fall, New York that portrays Tesla reading a set of note, which is a duplicate of a monument that decorates the front of the Belgrade University Faculty of Electrical Engineering.
• In the 1910s, Tesla started exhibiting pronounced symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder. He became obsessed with the number three, often walking around a building three times before entering, and demanding a stack of three folded cloth napkins beside his place at every meal.
• In August 1917, Tesla established the principles regarding frequency and power level for the first primitive radar units.
• Late in his life, Tesla began working on defense projects, including what he claimed was a teleforce weapon or “death ray.” The death ray was supposedly related to his research on ball lightening and plasma.
• In January 1943, Tesla died of heart failure at the age of 86 in New York. Despite selling his AC electricity patents, Tesla was destitute when he died.

Superb Quotes by Nikola Tesla

• “It is true that some of them have had to do with wireless telegraphy and that in addition to the tower and poles there is a hole dug in the ground. This is 150 feet deep and is used in these experiments. The people about there, had they been awake instead of asleep, at other times would have seen even stranger things. Some day, but not at this time, I shall make an announcement of something that I never once dreamed of.
• Universal Peace, assuming it to be in the fullest sense realizable, might not require eons for its accomplishment, however probable this may appear, judging from the imperceptibly slow growth of all great reformatory ideas of the past.
• It is a simple feat of scientific electrical engineering — only expensive — blind, faint-hearted, doubting world.
• With a different form of wireless instrument devised by me some years ago it was found practicable to locate a body of metallic ore below the ground, and it seems that a submarine could be similarly detected.Most of our work and resource is squandered. Our onward march is marked by devastation. Everywhere there is an appalling loss of time, effort and life. A cheerless view, but true. Most certainly, some planets are not inhabited, but others are, and among these there must exist life under all conditions and phases of development.
• Ere many generations pass, our machinery will be driven by a power obtainable at any point of the universe.
• There is no conflict between the ideal of religion and the ideal of science, but science is opposed to theological dogmas because science is founded on fact. To me, the universe is simply a great machine which never came into being and never will end. The human being is no exception to the natural order. Man, like the universe, is a machine. Nothing enters our minds or determines our actions which is not directly or indirectly a response to stimuli beating upon our sense organs from without.
• The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result. He does not expect that his advanced ideas will be readily taken up. His work is like that of the planter — for the future. His duty is to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and point the way. He lives and labors and hopes.