Nikola Tesla was born July 10th, 1856 in the village of Smiljan, Lika [Lee-ka],a former province of Croatia, now part of present day Yugoslavia. He was one of five children of a Serbian family. Tesla's father was a Serbian Orthodox priest and his mother a house wife who was multi-skilled in a variety of crafts, including tool making. His mother was most influential on young Tesla's life. Tesla believed his mother was an “inventor of the first order.” As a young boy, Tesla was an inventor in his own right, creating water wheels, a cornstalk pop gun and a motor propelled by June Bugs. His mother's ingenuity would foreshadow Tesla's own dedication to his inventions and scientific ideas. Both of Tesla's parents had prodigious memories, a trait characteristic of Tesla during his remarkable achievements as an engineer and scientist.
Tesla suffered from a mysterious ailment as a young boy. He would see vivid images accompanied by strong flashes of light. Tesla confused these images with actual objects. When a name of an object was spoken, Tesla would see it manifest before his eyes. At seventeen years of age, Tesla directed his unique ability towards invention. He would later harness the powers of his mind to map out his inventions to the finest detail, without need of models, drawings or photographs. Tesla constructed and operated his inventions in his mind, projecting them like holograms.
Tesla attended school at the Real Gymnasium in Gospic, Croatia showing an advanced interest in physics, especially electricity. He experimented with water turbines and motors. Even as an adolescent, Tesla was passionate about becoming an engineer. Tesla’s fascination with science and engineering was against his father’s wishes, who wanted him to become a clergyman. Tesla announced he would one day harness the immense power of Niagra Falls, after viewing a picture of the pristine natural wonder on a post card. Thirty years later, Tesla would see his dream project into reality.
Tesla studied electrical engineering at the Austrian Polytechnic Institute in Graz, Austria. “Studious” would be an understatement for the young inventor; he often studied more than twenty hours each day. He taught himself a number of languages and memorized entire classical works of literature. Tesla left the Institute during his junior year at the university, after receiving news of the death of his father. He later left for Czechoslovakia, in and attended the University of Prague. In Prague, Tesla studied advanced mathematics, engineering, languages and philosophy.
Philosophers David Hume and Renes Descartes, among others, influenced Tesla as a scientist in the making. The work of Ernest Mach, world renowned experimental physicist and philosopher, was parallel to Tesla’s during his university education. Mach himself constructed machines that produced electromagnetic waves similar to Tesla’s later experiments in Colorado Springs. As a student at university, Tesla was also fleshing out his ideas of Alternating Current or AC, a label found on most household appliances today. By harnessing electricity in the form of Alternating Current, Tesla would design systems for transmitting AC electricity throughout the world. In the presence of Direct Current or DC systems, he would speak up abruptly in class, explaining the extreme inefficiency of DC systems in generating electric power. Tesla’s criticism of DC power would continue along with his inexhaustible flow of creative energy for developing AC power systems.
Tesla left the University of Prague after his first semester to work in Hungary for the Central Telegraph Office in Budapest. Tesla was the engineer for Hungary’s first telephone system and developed a telephone repeater and amplifier that lead to the invention of the loudspeaker. While working in Budapest, Tesla became aware of the inventions of the wizard of menlo park, Thomas Alva Edison.
Dedicating every spare moment to his work, with little sleep or nourishment, Tesla suffered from a nervous breakdown. Tesla nearly died during this experience and reported strange phenomena, such as the ability to hear sounds from great distances away. Tesla’s near death experience resembled stories of mystics attaining heightened levels of awareness or altered states of consciousness. This enigmatic moment in his life lead to his most famous discovery -- the “rotating magnetic field.” While reciting a passage from Goethe’s Faust, the invention came to Tesla in a flash and he quickly sketched the plans for his rotating magnetic field, a mystical experience leading to the Second Industrial Revolution.
Tesla accepted an offer to work for the Continental Edison Company in Paris and left Budapest in April, 1882. At this time, Tesla had already built his first AC motor. He then left for America and arrived in New York late spring of 1884 to work for Edison. A decision that would eventually lead to his battle with Edison over AC and DC electric power transmission.
Tesla met Edison at his laboratory and was humbled by Edison’s career as a prolific inventor with no university training. Tesla was promised an extremely large sum of fifty-thousand dollars upon working for Edison. An avid supporter of Direct Current, Edison showed no interest in Tesla’s AC invention. Instead, Tesla worked for Edison in redesigning DC devices. Tesla not only redesigned many of Edison’s devices, but replaced many of them with new machines designed by himself. After completing numerous projects for Edison, Tesla did not receive the payment he was promised. Edison told Tesla he did not understand an “American joke.” Tesla left Edison’s company in 1885, alienated by Edison’s lack of gratitude and interest in his profound ideas. It would be one of a series of disappointments Tesla would experience regarding the nature of business in the U.S.
Tesla knew his AC system was far more advanced than anything Edison had invented at the time. With the help of a former patent attorney of Edison, Tesla broke down his complex inventions into individual patents. Tesla would complete over forty patents for his AC system, he merely needed an investor to market his inventions to the world. After being rejected by other potential investors, Tesla worked as a ditch digger until he was introduced to an engineer with the Western Union Telegraph Company. It was through this meeting he was able to demonstrate the creative potential of his most cherished and revolutionary invention, the rotating magnetic field.
Tesla designed a clever exhibit of his rotating magnetic field by placing an iron egg at the center of his AC device. The magnetic field produced by the device caused the egg to spin rapidly until it stood upright on one end. This convinced the lawyer Charles F. Peck of Tesla’s brilliance and together with a banker connected to J.P. Morgan, they formed the Tesla Electric Company. Tesla developed the first patents for his AC system with his new company, but still experienced problems in communicating his marvelous invention to the world. In May, 1888, Tesla presented a paper entitled, “A New Alternating Current Motor,” before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. This drew many intrigued investors to Tesla’s brushless AC induction motor, including George Westinghouse.
Westinghouse was central to the marketing and application of Tesla’s inventions. He understood the future of electric power lied with technologies utilizing alternating current, and Tesla’s inventions were most promising. Westinghouse was an extremely wealthy entrepreneur and inventor who met with Tesla in Pittsburgh in July, 1888. Tesla sold his AC motor patents to Westinghouse and moved from New York to Pittsburgh to work for the Westinghouse Electric Company. He would not continue his work without competition. Various companies challenged Tesla’s patents and attempted to steal rights to his AC systems. Meanwhile, Edison started a campaign to defeat AC by touring the country, electrocuting animals and convicts with extremely high AC voltages. The “War of the Currents” in the late 1880s came with a huge price, resulting in the bankruptcy of Edison and Westinghouse. Tesla relieved Westinghouse of a contract to grant Tesla royalties of his AC induction motor, entitling Tesla to millions. Tesla ended his royalty contract with Westinghouse in order to give his AC systems to the world.
Tesla received wide acclaim for his inventions and discoveries at universities and the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. He gained national prominence from his public appearances and lectures. His reputation as an electrical wizard was approaching that of Edison’s. Tesla became a citizen of the United States in 1891 at age thirty-five. He established a laboratory in New York City on south fifth avenue the same year and another lab on Houston Street. Tesla illuminated his laboratories with wireless flourescent lights. During the many prolific periods in Tesla’s life and even at the height of his fame, he would never marry, asserting that no inventor should ever marry and must dedicate every spare moment to their work. Other than his mother, the closest relationship with a woman Tesla ever had was his close friendship with the wife of Robert Underwood Johnson, editor of Century magazine.
On February third 1892, Tesla performed and lectured before the Royal Society in London, demonstrating a number of his AC systems. It would be one of three major events leading to the transmission of electric power throughout the world. In response to the dangers associated with AC electricity, Tesla astounded the Royal Society by passing high frequency electric current through his body to disprove fears surrounding his inventions. Tesla passed tens of thousands of volts through himself using his invention the Tesla Coil, a device altering the frequency of electricity, allowing it to flow around the subject without causing harm. Tesla also powered a number of flourescent lights, illuminating them with the touch of his hand. Motors powered wirelessly were present, along with a device producing a focused beam of light that could “vaporize” matter, known today as the laser beam. Before the Royal Society, an esteemed group of scientists, many of them Tesla’s childhood heroes, witnessed his genius.
The next impact of Tesla’s inventions would be the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. Tesla’s polyphase generators used by Westinghouse Electric provided electric lighting for the entire event, producing three times the power needed for the city of Chicago. The generators produced Alternating Current in the form of three-phase electricity, an electric standard eventually used for most commercial power systems. At the Chicago World’s Fair, Tesla astounded the audience present with his demonstrations in wireless transmissions of electricity. Tesla attracted many wealthy industrialists, including J.P. Morgan. Morgan had a special interest in the Serbian wizard’s inventions, especially radio. To this day, the invention of radio is often accredited to Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian inventor who was a contemporary of Tesla.
In 1893, Tesla also demonstrated principles related to radio communication at a conference in St. Louis Missouri. His tuned circuits used for radio were well published at this time. Many people passed through Tesla’s laboratory to witness his inventions, including Marconi, who would win the patent for the invention of radio in 1904. Tesla demonstrated a radio controlled boat, his teleautomaton, a forerunner in robotics in 1898, several years before Marconi experimented with his radio devices. Above all else, Tesla was infatuated with transmitting electrical energy without wires through the “natural medium.” Tesla felt any system for wireless transmission, less than his mostly theoretical world wireless system, was amateurish and unimportant.
Tesla formed a new company in 1895, the Nikola Tesla Company, with key players in the development of the Niagra Power Station. Westinghouse had won the bid for implementing Tesla’s AC system for harnessing the immense power of Niagra Falls. Tesla received large publicity from this event, as the message spread that only his AC polyphase system could generate and transmit electricity to Buffalo, NY. Tesla traveled to Niagra to witness the monumental power plant that began as a vision from his childhood. Harnessing Niagra Falls made Tesla world famous, but the genius inventor had much greater expectations for the future.
At an inaugural celebration of the Niagra Power Station in Buffalo, NY, he addressed an international audience of colleagues, including businessmen, scientists and engineers. Although proud of this technological feat, Tesla was critical of Niagra, realizing a far greater and more efficient system for distributing electric power was possible. In comparison to his idea of a world wireless network, capable of transmitting information and radio communications around the planet, the Niagra Power Station paled in significance. Tesla’s plan to transmit electricity without wires would make new conventional forms of electrical transmission obsolete. Tesla’s speech was cut short before he could make statements about his plan for his world wireless network. His experiments at Colorado Springs would bring him closer to his artistic vision for transmitting electricity without wires.
Tesla constructed a laboratory in the backwoods of Colorado Springs to research his theories of wireless transmission. Tesla’s large barn-like laboratory had a 200-ft tower erected from its roof with a silver, spherical bulb fixated on top. Many of Tesla’s complex devices were found in this lab, including a Tesla Coil 45 feet in width. The discharge of his coils would reach millions of volts and produce electric arcs of one-hundred-thirty-five feet or more, artificially illuminating the night sky. To a passerby, Tesla’s lab could have been mistaken for a Martian space station.
Tesla reported to receive radio signals of extraterrestrial origin at his lab, a claim popularized by the media and rejected by the scientific community. Tesla later questioned the nature of the signal after receiving news that his adversary, Marconi, was sending signals using the very tuned circuitry Tesla had invented. Tesla maintained the signals he received were extraterrestrial and fervently believed in the existence of interplanetary civilizations. The media responded by framing Tesla as the mad scientist who speaks to other worlds.
Located not far from downtown Colorado Springs, Tesla was allowed free electric power from the local utility. He experimented with using the earth as a conductor for electrical energy, utilizing the earth’s magnetic field as a conduit for electric waves. Tesla discovered the earth itself had electrical impulses that could be used to transmit electricity. He used them to illuminate some of his large lamps through the earth itself. Tesla also studied atmospheric electricity and observed stationary waves during lightning storms. Stationary waves were literally electronic vibrations impressed upon the earth. This form of wave was of extreme importance to the underlying theory behind Tesla’s world wireless tower, known as Wardenclyffe. Tesla left Colorado Springs in January, 1900 to pursue his wireless power transmission facility, in New York.
The Wardenclyffe tower was to be built on Long Island, after J.P. Morgan provided necessary funding to purchase the site and begin construction, making Morgan and Tesla business partners. Wardenclyffe would be the largest communications tower of its kind in the world. It was projected to be six-hundred feet in height, challenging any proposed radio transmission tower by Marconi or anyone else. Due to an unprecedented conflict with Morgan’s financial competitor, Ned Harrington, owner of Pacific Bell, the stock market went into a recession in the spring, creating a heavy financial burden on Tesla. Tesla would experience extreme difficulty in providing the funds needed to complete Wardenclyffe. Tesla decided to reduce the proposed original size of the tower by half. But when Tesla approached Morgan with his ambitious plans for Wardenclyffe, Morgan rejected it. Tesla reduced the size of the tower even further, despite Morgan’s partnership with Tesla, the industrial magnate’s interest in Wardenclyffe was already beginning to wane.
Wardenclyffe nearly came to a standstill, but Tesla persevered regardless of whether Morgan would continue to support him financially or not. The Morgan Electric Company was already beginning to reap large profits from Tesla’s AC induction motor, producing even more of Tesla’s patented devices than Westinghouse. Also, plans for an electric subway system using Tesla’s AC polyphase system were well under way. Marconi succeeded in transmitting radio signals across the Atlantic using Tesla’s tuned circuits. When Marconi and colleagues were celebrating in New York, Tesla was witnessing the first tier of his tower go into place. By 1902, the Wardenclyffe tower had reached its full elevation of 189 feet. Tesla’s funds were depleted. He was forced to sell off what few assets he had and laid off most of his workers. After meeting with Morgan once more, he agreed to continue to support Tesla, but it was not to be. Morgan ended their business partnership for Wardenclyffe before it was completed. Newspapers called Wardenclyffe “Tesla’s Million-Dollar Folley.” Tesla did not give up. His efforts were well beyond money. Tesla was driven by his humanitarian ideal that electric power should belong to everyone.
Tesla attempted to seek funding for Wardenclyffe from sources other than Morgan, but few responded offering financial assistance. Tesla did receive money owed to him from Morgan, but it was still only a fraction of what he needed to cover his expenses. Tesla’s world wireless system was not so much motivated by profit-driven humanitarian goals. In an article he wrote titled, “World Wireless Electrical Energy Transmission for World Peace,” Tesla furthered his idea of peace through the “annihilation of distance.” Tesla continued to communicate with the press as Wardenclyffe went further into financial peril. Despite his circumstances, Tesla re-established himself as the genius wizard who lit the world. In 1917, Tesla’s Wardenclyffe tower, his life’s work, was demolished. Radio communications exploded into an international industry and its pioneer was struggling with large financial debt. With Wardenclyffe reduced to a memory, Tesla dedicated his time to other inventions, including aircraft, based on designs he developed in college. Tesla gave a speech at the Waldorf-Astoria on how the jet plane would be the future of transportation. Tesla had also devised aircraft to be powered wirelessly showing how fuel was not necessary to power vehicles.
Two of the most publicized inventions authored by Tesla was a machine capable of harnessing cosmic rays and a weapon to end all wars, known as the death ray. Tesla claimed to harness cosmic radiation emitted from the sun, an energy resource he claimed was “everywhere present in unlimited quantities.” Although the exact source of this energy seemed remote and virtually unknown, Tesla said it would eliminate the need for fossil fuels completely. Tesla relayed to his future biographer Jack O’Neil that he had harnessed cosmic rays to operate a motive device. In 1931, Tesla was featured on the cover of Time magazine on his seventy-fifth birthday. His invention of an interplanetary transmitter became known, an invention dubbed the Teslascope.
Tesla’s death ray was a particle beam capable of catastrophic destruction of a greater magnitude than any weapon in existence, not even the atomic bomb invented years later could compare. Tesla also devised a electronic defense shield capable of defending entire countries. Tesla planned to sell his defense shield to the governments of the United States and England. He believed this invention would make war obsolete. Tesla died January seventh, 1943 at eighty-six years old. Soon after his death, the U.S. supreme court granted him the original patent for radio, crediting him as inventor
Tesla had left behind a scientific and technological legacy. While his AC polyphase system and radio was the most influential, other inventions also bear Tesla’s name. The spark plug ignitor for gasoline engines was invented by Tesla, along with high frequency arc lighting systems. Tesla’s bladeless turbine, first demonstrated on his fiftieth birthday in 1906, was another of his little known yet revolutionary inventions in harnessing alternative energy resources. Tesla’s patents also spanned the field of medicine, known during his time as electroctherapeutics. Tesla’s inventions, whether theoretical or practical, helped usher in the coming age of computers, robotics and information technology. There was simply no limit to Tesla’s genius as an inventor. He discovered the effects of x-rays in 1892 years prior to their official discovery. In 1917, Tesla had discovered the principles of frequency and power level used for the first radar systems. Tesla understood the particle/wave duality of light and devised models of the atom, including subatomic phenomena, before the advent of quantum physics. Tesla’s scientific theories and technological visions possessed radical implications for the future, many claiming a transformed society well beyond the one currently occupied in history.