Some say he was a man born out of time, a man born too soon, that his inventions changed the world, and that he was an unappreciated genius who wanted to give free energy to people.
Nikola Tesla (July 10, 1856 – January 7,1943), was an American electrical engineer, physicist, scientist; and was a world-renowned inventor in groundbreaking technological discoveries. He made revolutionary developments in the field of electromagnetism in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. Tesla helped usher in the Second Industrial Revolution. Tesla had patents on alternating current (AC), including the polyphase system, electric motor, radio, and the Tesla coil, with major contributions in establishing radar, remote control, robotics, and adding to the expansion of theoretical physics and nuclear physics. Tesla’s inventions included the AC hydroelectric power system, fluorescent lighting, and wireless communication.
Tesla was born in a village of Smiljan, part of the Austrian Empire of 1856 known as Croatia, today in southeast Europe. Ever since he was a child, Tesla was very fascinated by electricity and nature. He often studied both subjects greatly. His father was a priest and he was the fourth of five children. He was often sick and suffered from depression. Tesla studied electrical engineering at the Austrian Polytechnic in Graz. He went to several universities in Europe and excelled as a top student. He proclaimed to have photographic memory and was constantly receiving flashes of inspiration and was able to visualize in detail how things really worked. Tesla was fluent in many languages: Serbian, English, Hungarian, Czech, German, Latin, French, and Italian.
Tesla was becoming famous in Europe before coming to America in 1884. In Budapest, Tesla became the chief electrician to the National Telephone Company in 1881. While there he developed a device as a telephone amplifier, making this the first loudspeaker. In Paris, France by 1882, Tesla was working for the Continental Edison Company, as an engineer making improvements to Edison’s ideas on the electric equipment brought from America overseas. Tesla also conceived and held patents on the makings of the “induction motor” and the machines that could benefit from using rotating magnetic fields. In 1884, Tesla arrived in New York City. Edison hired Tesla to work for his Edison Machine Works. Tesla’s work greatly improved many of the Edison company’s most complicated electrical engineering problems. Tesla was a total visionary and his work was groundbreaking.
Edison was intimidated by Tesla. Edison’s inventions were the light bulb, phonograph, and the microphone in telephones. Tesla’s ideas of AC power were shut down by Edison (who didn’t know how to create AC), especially when Tesla noticed how inefficient Edison’s direct current (DC) power system was; it could not be sent out to the masses without hundreds of electrical generators every few miles. Tesla redesigned Edison’s inefficient motor and generators, and gave the Edison Company quite a few profitable new patents that both improved and benefited the company. In 1885 when Edison refused to pay Tesla the extra money owed to him for his tireless work, Tesla quickly resigned. Out of a job Tesla tried to form his own company but investors didn’t believe his AC ideas. He fell on hard times and tried to raise capital for his electrical innovations.
Thomas Edison’s major rival was George Westinghouse, who was also seeking to develop AC to rule the monopoly of electrical current. Only Nikola Tesla held US patents for AC polyphase transmission and AC motor in 1887 and 1888. Both are used today worldwide as the planet’s main power transmissions. In 1888 Westinghouse hired Tesla to work in the Pittsburgh labs. Westinghouse was more open-minded and bought into Tesla’s ideas with enthusiasm. As early as 1891 Tesla had invented what he called the “world system” for “the transmission of electrical energy without wires” that depends upon electrical conductivity. This is totally revolutionary considering it’s what we use today – 100 years later. His principles could effect communication and simple lighting of homes and building without wires if fully utilized.
Tesla became an American citizen that same year in July 1891 at the age of 35. In 1891 he invented the Tesla coil, an induction coil widely used in radio technology. Tesla’s patent on the fundamental circuitry for radio for global communication is contested by another radio inventor Guglielmo Marconi. (Later in 1909, Marconi is awarded a shared Noble Prize in Physics with Karl Braun for contributions to radio communications.) This was an outrage to Tesla who’s patents clearly proves he was first with radio. The battle for credit would go to the Supreme Court over the next 50 years.
Tesla had that same year made patents on the Electro-Magnetic Motor, Alternating Electric Current Generator, and Electric Incandescent Lamp. Tesla created the Houston Street laboratory in New York at 46E. Houston Street. In 1891 he was experimenting on his electro-mechanical oscillators to generate a resonance frequency. The result caused a small earthquake, with only the surrounding buildings shaking. Tesla generated a resonance of several buildings nearly a block long causing complaints to the police to investigate. Tesla heightened the frequency and his own building began to shake uncontrollably. Realizing the imminent danger he had no option but to hit the machine with a sledgehammer to end the wayward experiment just as the police arrived. People today have tried to recreate this effect, but have done so on buildings that are earthquake proof, and not made from 1891 specifications.
At the World’s Fair of 1893 in Chicago, Tesla and Westinghouse successfully demonstrated to visitors that AC power could fully illuminate the Exposition. Among the electrical exhibits were Tesla’s fluorescent lamps and impressing everyone on lighting lamps which had no wires connected to them. Showing how electrical power could easily be transmuted through the air – wireless energy! Within three years, Tesla had sold some 40 patents on a electrical power system to Westinghouse. Together, they used the AC power system to hardness the energy of Niagara Falls into electricity. Tesla was an environmentalist and this fit right into his clean energy idea. Nothing was cleaner and more free than using hydroelectric power that was non-polluting and renewable.
Greatly respected now as pioneer of his time Tesla kept busy with more inventions and spending time with personal friends like Mark Twain and Stanford White. An example of Tesla’s vision of free power for all and less greed: In 1897, Westinghouse was going bankrupt having spent so much money trying to beat Edison, Tesla decided to break contract with Westinghouse, and give up his patent royalties in effect saving the company from going under. This was a fatal flaw for Tesla – not being a very good businessman. He could have been a billionaire with his patent rights.
By 1899 Tesla constructed a new laboratory in Colorado Springs to do research on ways to transmit electrical power and wireless energy over long distances. He made lightning bolts flashed 100 feet into the air from his 142-foot metal mast supporting a large copper ball within the tower. Tesla wanted to prove that he could send a beam of power across to the other side of the world. Moving back to New York in 1900 Tesla began work on the Wardenclyffe Tower facility. By 1902 the Wardenclyffe Tower was located in Shoreham, Long Island, New York. The 187 foot tower was designed by architect Stanford White and funded by J.P. Morgan, wealthy industrialists, along with other venture capitalists.
By 1904 over budgeted, disagreements with Tesla on Morgan’s desire to charge people for any electrical energy produced by the tower, J.P. Morgan leaves the project, and encouraged other investors to avoid Tesla’s folly. This became a dreadful period for Tesla. Edison held great contempt toward Tesla and denounced his character and judgment, (not to mention AC power). Guglielmo Marconi receives the Nobel Prize for radio in 1909. While Tesla kept working on the tower project and finding no other investors, his living off patent royalties were ending, he became very depressed.
While others were reaping the financial rewards and prestige with Tesla’s work, he was heavily in debt, the Wardenclyffe Tower property was foreclosed twice, broken into, and partially destroyed much of his work. Tesla in 1915 filed a lawsuit against Marconi to obtain a court injunction against the claims of Marconi on the radio patents, but the courts refused him. Tesla in 1916 also filled for bankruptcy owing so much to investors from the past. In 1917 the United States government gave orders to destroy the Wardenclyffe Tower claiming to prevent its use by foreign agents. The tower was scraped and dismantled. This devastated Tesla, but in 1917 he built Telefunken in Sayville, Long Island. This was a more advanced machine than Wardenclyffe and proved some of Tesla‘s theories, but the facility was seized and torn down by the Marines because it was suspected that it could be used by German spies. This makes very clear the US government was very much aware of Nikola Tesla’s viable and dangerous work.
The 1920’s and 1930’s were particular hard for Tesla, nearly forgotten, and successfully ridiculed by rivals, and people who didn’t understand his ideas. He made few patents at this time and on his 75th birthday in 1931, he made the cover of Time magazine finally acknowledging his contribution to electrical power. But the scientific community regarded Tesla as an eccentric mad-scientist type, with unbelievable ideas and theories. None of which could be proven true until generations later by those who understood them.
Tesla even came up with a new Theory of Relativity challenging Albert Einstein‘s, unheard of at the time. The Dynamic Theory of Gravity by Tesla explains the relation between gravitation and electromagnetic force as a unified field theory (a model over matter, the ether, and energy). It is a unified field theory to unify all the fundamental forces (such as the force between all masses) and particle responses into a single theoretical framework. This theory is under serious consideration by researchers today who now have a better understanding of gravity, matter, and energy.
Tesla died alone in his New York hotel of heart failure, between the evening of January 5 and the morning of January 8, 1943, at the age of 86. Tesla despite his electrical patents had became impoverished and totally in debt. That same year the US Supreme Court upheld Tesla’s patent recognizing him as the inventor of radio. Immediately after Tesla’s death became known, the Office of Alien Property was ordered by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to take possession of his papers and property, even though he was a US citizen. The US military was very much interested in Tesla’s work. Just before his death, Tesla was designing his Teleforce weapon or death ray. The FBI and military stated that all his papers, patents, and inventions to be highly classified and top secret.
Tesla’s family and the Yugoslav embassy pleaded with the American authorities to gain back his personal effects. Ultimately, his nephew, Sava Kosanovich, got possession of some of his personal items which are now housed in the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade, Serbia. At Niagara Falls on Goat Island is a statue of Nikola Tesla reading a book. Tesla is on the one dollar bill in Serbia/Yugoslavia.
Tesla’s inventions changed the world. His applications could be used for good purposes or for great destruction. Here is a recap of some of his best known inventions and patents. In his lifetime Tesla made some 300 patents, unbeknownst to the general public the US government has applied nearly all of them.
1. Alternating Current (AC)
2. Tesla coil
3. Induction motor
4. Wireless technology (including remote control)
5. Tesla electric car
4. Teleforce-Death Ray
5. Robotics
6. Tesla oscillator
7. Rotating magnetic field
8. Particle beam weapon
9. Hydroelectric power system
10. Fluorescent lighting
11. X ray tubes.
During World War II the War Department was looking for anything to give them an edge in leading technology. They knew Tesla had patents for devices that could do incredible things like: A particle beam weapon, a propulsion system based on anti-gravity by means of electricity and magnetism, creating artificial earthquakes from the oscillator, radar invisibility based on Tesla and Einstein’s unified field theory (some claim the energy fields of this magnitude in salt water would create a green mist, magnetophosphenes in people, disrupt matter frequencies as described in the rumored “Philadelphia Experiment” during WWII), and lastly, a new power system that could tap unlimited energy from thin air and a vacuum.
Tesla was a true underrated genius. He was into higher mathematics, analytic geometry, and experimental physics. A man way before his time. He claimed he could transmit energy through space and time. His research in ball lightning and plasma is unsurpassed. Tesla boasted he could gain free energy from voltage difference in the ionosphere that caused lightning. His idea for free energy was a threat. No one on the planet understood more about high frequency technology and high voltage energy than Tesla. He was an expert at understanding vibration and resonance. Tesla knew that everything that ever existed has a frequency and possesses a unique vibration that resonates with the heart of the universe. He knew every living thing, matter or energy, was connected. Tesla’s mind had discovered so many secrets of how the universe functions and everything was limitless in his eyes.
Tesla invented all types of oscillating machines including the Tesla Personal Oscillator which was to promote health and well-being, but just before his death, Tesla was working on Photographing Thought. Tesla was greatly aware that the power of thought, vibration, and resonance energy were connected, and could be enhanced for constructive purposes. Tesla saw a future where people would be talking on wireless phones, sending electronic messages, written or photographs in the airways, and hovering electro-magnetic vehicles. The forces that be have tried to make the world forget Dr. Nikola Tesla. He is missing from most history books and given only a footnote of recognition. Tesla made life better for everyone on the planet with his innovative technology. But Edison won the popular vote and we are still paying for electrical power in his name.
The US government still holds most of Tesla’s patents, blueprints, experimental designs, and have been utilizing them to there own advantage. They would rather you not know about the stuff he created. To fully understand and appreciate this great inventor check your local libraries, local book stores, Amazon.com, “The Tesla Foundation of North America” on the web, and check out links like: http://www.teslasociety.com/
Go and visit The Nikola Tesla Museum located in the central area of Belgrade where it has more than 160,000 original documents on Tesla the man and his awesome achievements. Watch Tesla’s free documentary video of his missing secrets at: http://www.escapetheillusion.com/blog/2008/10/the-missing-secrets-of-nikola-tesla/
Here is a link to his accurate predictions of what he called Tesla’s World System: http://teslaenergy.net/ws.html
